Footnote Fonts

[Chris]

I just discovered an interesting issue.

I’m using Word 2004 on my Mac Powerbook 17. I’m composing a document using
Courier New, and when I started preparing footnotes, I noticed that the
footnote font was New Times Roman.

“No biggie,†I said, “I’ll just select all of the text in the footnote and
change the font to Courier New.â€

Well, this works just fine for the bulk of the footnote text, but the
superscript number in the footnote won’t change from New Times Roman to
Courier New. I’ve selected the footnote number with the whole footnote, and
selected it by itself, but the superscript note font will not change. MS
Word Help (for 2004) seems to say that I should be able to do this:

“Note: You can change the size or font of the note reference mark just as
you would any other text. Select the note reference mark. Click Font on the
Format menu, and then apply the formats you want.â€

Shouldn’t footnotes, as a default, be created using the same font as the
main body of text? If not, is there some setting in Word 2004 that allows
you to default the font for footnotes?

Any help would be appreciated!

Chris

ש×ָלוֹ×

 

[Chris]

I should have been paying attention to the style. The Normal template I’m
using has a default style for footnotes. The problem I’m having must be
solvable if I tinker some more.

But shouldn’t I still be able to change that superscript reference mark,
regardless of the selected style?

Chris

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

It's not exactly an issue, it's that you don't understand how Word operates.
There *is* a function that allows you to default the font--it's called
styles. The default text in a document is usually formatted in Normal style.
If instead of highlighting the text in the main document and applying
Courier New to it, you had instead changed the Normal style so that it was
Courier New instead of Times New Roman, then the footnotes would have
changed, because they are in Footnote Text style, and based on Normal Style,
and the numbers would have changed, because they are in Footnote Reference
style, *also* based on Normal Style. All would have happened exactly as you
say it should, Word has it nicely set up that way, but you have to
understand how Word works to efficiently manipulate Word. (and Help doesn't
always do the best job of teaching.....)

There's tons to say about styles, but the best introduction is here:
http://shaunakelly.com/word/index.html
Read the four links under Styles in MS Word, and also this page, which is
not your problem, but has an excellent explanation of what goes on:
http://shaunakelly.com/word/styles/FormatOfTextChanges.html

Read those links, then feel free to post back with more questions. There
are a lot of FAQ pages on the web, plus a lot of information on this group,
but that's the best introduction.

DM

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Yeah, you are right, they aren't changing.

Actually, my previous message has an error. The Footnote Reference style is
a character style rather than a paragraph style, and is based on Default
Paragraph Font rather than Normal style, which means that the Footnote
Reference style uses the underlying font of the paragraph it is in, which
means that even though the numbers in the main text and the footnotes are in
the same style, they can be different. But modifying Normal style in the
main document still works to change everything.

I just got them to change by changing Footnote Text style to Wingdings.
(Had to use Wingdings to make sure I could tell they were changing)

They don't appear to change in the main text when you select and change
font, either. But both places they respond to direct application of size.

Hmm, I don't know.

DM

PS. If you could use plain text to post to newsgroups instead of HTML, it
would be appreciated.

 

[Chris]

DM-

Sorry for the HTML posting. Will use plain text from now on.

My limited experience with styles has been good, but I'm an old dog, so bear
with me while I hone my styles skills. I'll tweak the Footnote Text style.

Thanks for your quick response and further clarification!

Chris

P.S. Does "Hmm, I don't know." mean, in fact, that this is sorta, kinda,
might possibly be an issue. ;-) I love MS Word 2004, BTW.

ש×ָלוֹ×

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

My limited experience with styles has been good, but I'm an old dog, so bear
with me while I hone my styles skills. I'll tweak the Footnote Text style.

Or even better, just tweak the Normal style to match your direct font
application. Tweaking Normal style will also change the font in the Header
and Footer styles, I suspect there's a good chance you might be using those
as well?

P.S. Does "Hmm, I don't know." mean, in fact, that this is sorta, kinda,
might possibly be an issue. ;-)

Yeah, that's exactly what it means. With luck, someone else will come
along who knows a little bit more about the behind the scenes, and offer an
explanation, or confirm that it's an unfixable bug, or point us in a new
direction by saying they can't reproduce it on their machine, etc, etc.

Glad to have helped,
Daiya

 

[Chris]

Tweaked the Normal style and all is well!

Chris