Trouble converting Word 6.0/95 into 97-2004 Word doc.

Hi Dan,

I was thinking your problem is line spacing, not word spacing. Wide spaces
between words sounds like something is wrong--I don't get it here. And
that's not trivial at all. I've got a doc in Courier New here and all the
spaces between words are the same size and about the size of a letter.
(Courier is inherently kinda awkward looking, though)

Are you using the exact driver for the printer you have? Is the text
justified on the right margin?

Under Format | Font | Character Spacing--that's not how kerning works, I
don't think. It is either on or off, and all you can do there is tell it to
automatically turn on for fonts at a certain size. I guess you mean you
changed the Spacing to Condensed at 1pt?

Daiya


On 11/4/05 4:52 PM, "dannybex" wrote:

Hi Daiya

Thanks again for your input. I don't know if you have access to the
people who create the next versions of Word, but I humbly plead that
they put in a way to change the kerning (as they do with line spacing,
under the Paragraph menu) where you can set it to "exactly" and then
specify how you want it to condense. I tried changing the kerning, and
nothing happened at 0.9 pt. When I changed it to 1 pt, two words from
the second line hopped up to the first line -- a HUGE change with just
1/10 of 1 pt difference. Yet I couldn''t set it for 0.97 pt or
whatever.

If this is the standard I guess I'll eventually blend in -- but to my
eye -- the wide spacing especially between words (in courier) looks
like it was typed like this.

Reeeeally awkward looking, made even worse when the line by line
spacing is tightened up.

Screenplays are formatted in single space, not double space, so after
tightening the 12 pt space between lines to 11.5 pt or even 11.75 --
because the space between the words is still so large, it accentuates
the larger space between the words, making it look (to me) like a stack
of bricks, rather than a paragraph.

I know this may all sound extremely trivial, but when one is trying to
break into the business, the a properly formatted script (not to
mention an entertaining one at that) is THE WAY to get one's foot in
the door, then you'd be as frustrated and upset as I am. Not with you
personally of course, but with Microsoft.

If you can, please pass on my complaint to the higher-ups. This
spacing, and the inability to custom adjust it -- well -- it sucks.

Thanks in advance,

Dan

You could also get huge gaps (especially in Courier) if the paragraph is
Justified.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Daiya Mitchell" wrote in message
.. .
Hi Dan,

I was thinking your problem is line spacing, not word spacing. Wide
spaces
between words sounds like something is wrong--I don't get it here. And
that's not trivial at all. I've got a doc in Courier New here and all the
spaces between words are the same size and about the size of a letter.
(Courier is inherently kinda awkward looking, though)

Are you using the exact driver for the printer you have? Is the text
justified on the right margin?

Under Format | Font | Character Spacing--that's not how kerning works, I
don't think. It is either on or off, and all you can do there is tell it
to
automatically turn on for fonts at a certain size. I guess you mean you
changed the Spacing to Condensed at 1pt?

Daiya


On 11/4/05 4:52 PM, "dannybex" wrote:

Hi Daiya

Thanks again for your input. I don't know if you have access to the
people who create the next versions of Word, but I humbly plead that
they put in a way to change the kerning (as they do with line spacing,
under the Paragraph menu) where you can set it to "exactly" and then
specify how you want it to condense. I tried changing the kerning, and
nothing happened at 0.9 pt. When I changed it to 1 pt, two words from
the second line hopped up to the first line -- a HUGE change with just
1/10 of 1 pt difference. Yet I couldn''t set it for 0.97 pt or
whatever.

If this is the standard I guess I'll eventually blend in -- but to my
eye -- the wide spacing especially between words (in courier) looks
like it was typed like this.

Reeeeally awkward looking, made even worse when the line by line
spacing is tightened up.

Screenplays are formatted in single space, not double space, so after
tightening the 12 pt space between lines to 11.5 pt or even 11.75 --
because the space between the words is still so large, it accentuates
the larger space between the words, making it look (to me) like a stack
of bricks, rather than a paragraph.

I know this may all sound extremely trivial, but when one is trying to
break into the business, the a properly formatted script (not to
mention an entertaining one at that) is THE WAY to get one's foot in
the door, then you'd be as frustrated and upset as I am. Not with you
personally of course, but with Microsoft.

If you can, please pass on my complaint to the higher-ups. This
spacing, and the inability to custom adjust it -- well -- it sucks.

Thanks in advance,

Dan

Hi again. I appreciate your patience and dedication Daiya.

And I also appreciate your understanding. The space between the words
is definitely more than the size of an average letter -- I would guess
about one and one/quarter's width? I agree, Courier is awkward looking
(old-fashioned) enough as it is...

I'm assuming I'm using the exact driver for the printer. (Weird
question -- why do they call it a "driver"? I thought a driver is
someone who drives...)

Anyway, when I hit "Print", the name of my printer is at the top of the
box that opens -- "Stylus Photo R220".

The text is left justified, right is ragged.

Character spacing may not be exactly the same as kerning. I think
kerning is more specifically the balancing space between certain letter
combinations. Nevertheless, nothing seems to change unless I change
the spacing to condensed at 1pt -- and then it's TOO crowded.
Producers will toss out the script for that reason alone as it's
obvious that the writer is trying to fool them into accepting what may
really be a 130 page script -- you know?

So if it looks right on your computer (do you have a mac or a pc?) I'm
not sure what I can do. I could always send you the first page in PDF
format so you could see it for yourself, as maybe I'm just crazy!?!!?


d.

Graham and Suzanne -- thanks for your replies too. I sincerely
appreciate your input!

Graham said: Word is not a page layout application. 'Pages' are
transient entities
produced in conjunction with the document formatting and the printer
driver.
Documents are reformatted according to the abilities of the printer as
dictated by the printer driver which Word interrogates for that
purpose."

This is again, what I just don't seem to understand. How does the
printer affect what I see on my computer screen BEFORE I even am ready
to print?

I'm adding this because it even though it didn't work, it MAY help
discover the root of the problem???

I got this advice offline -- to go into Format, then Font, then under
character spacing (or above it actually) change the scale to 95%.

When I did this, the space between the letters crowded noticeably,
making the spaces between the words even larger, or at the very least,
definitely more obvious.

So if I (or we?) could only find a way to reduce the space between the
words...



d

dannybex wrote:
This is again, what I just don't seem to understand. How does the
printer affect what I see on my computer screen BEFORE I even am ready
to print?

The printer driver is the software that determines the capabilities of the
printer and allows the document to be printed. Word works very closely with
the printer driver to determine font availability, and its positioning on
the page, page layout, paper handling etc, all of which are provided by the
driver and not by Word. To easily determine this for yourself, add the
generic / text only printer driver to Windows and see what effect that has
on your document when you set it as the active printer. You will immediately
lose the ability to change fonts as plain text cannot adopt font
information.

The printer driver tells Word how to space the fonts, where to place the
page breaks etc. There can be differences in presentation between different
driver versions for the same printer - and different operating systems will
have different driver versions.

If your application requires you to present your work on a given number of
pages, then you need to know how many Words there are to be to a page, and
thus you could adjust the font size, text and line spacing to achieve the
results you want based on the printer that will be used to output the
document to paper. If you are unsure which printer will be used, it would be
worth installing Acrobat and having its driver as the active printer while
you format the document. The resulting PDF file will retain the page layout
no matter what printer it is output to.

See also http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TextReflow.htm

--

Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site http://word.mvps.org

Hi Graham,

Thanks for your info on printer "drivers". Why they don't just call it
printer software is beyond me...

Apparently you missed my first post -- I have a Mac G5, not a PC with
Windows. Because of strict entertainment industry standards described
above, I cannot change the typeface, or "cheat" by narrowing the line
spacing or font size. They'll immediately suspect I'm trying to make a
screenplay they consider too long (120+pages) to look shorter - within
industry norms of 95-110 pages.

With screenplays, the number of words on a page varies enormously,
depending on the amount of scene description and/or dialogue. Some
pages could be have very little description and dialogue, while others
might have twice that.

I do have Acrobat Reader, so I suppose I have a printer "driver" --
software! -- for that. I'll look into it, but as Daiya mentioned,
this unusual spacing between WORDS is not correct, and shouldn't be
looking the way it does, regardless of which printer it's linked to.
At least I think that's what she was implying...

Thanks again,

d.

The printer affects what you see on the screen before you print because Word
aims to be WYSIWYG, and this depends on the printer (driver) selected. It's
possible that a "photo printer" is not ideal for text printing, but that
would just be a wild guess.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"dannybex" wrote in message
oups.com...
Graham and Suzanne -- thanks for your replies too. I sincerely
appreciate your input!

Graham said: Word is not a page layout application. 'Pages' are
transient entities
produced in conjunction with the document formatting and the printer
driver.
Documents are reformatted according to the abilities of the printer as
dictated by the printer driver which Word interrogates for that
purpose."

This is again, what I just don't seem to understand. How does the
printer affect what I see on my computer screen BEFORE I even am ready
to print?

Given the variation in page content, it's remarkable that the industry seems
to have established a strict pages-to-minutes ratio.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"dannybex" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi Graham,

Thanks for your info on printer "drivers". Why they don't just call it
printer software is beyond me...

Apparently you missed my first post -- I have a Mac G5, not a PC with
Windows. Because of strict entertainment industry standards described
above, I cannot change the typeface, or "cheat" by narrowing the line
spacing or font size. They'll immediately suspect I'm trying to make a
screenplay they consider too long (120+pages) to look shorter - within
industry norms of 95-110 pages.

With screenplays, the number of words on a page varies enormously,
depending on the amount of scene description and/or dialogue. Some
pages could be have very little description and dialogue, while others
might have twice that.

I do have Acrobat Reader, so I suppose I have a printer "driver" --
software! -- for that. I'll look into it, but as Daiya mentioned,
this unusual spacing between WORDS is not correct, and shouldn't be
looking the way it does, regardless of which printer it's linked to.
At least I think that's what she was implying...

Thanks again,

d.

Hi Dan,

On 11/4/05 11:11 PM, "dannybex" wrote:

I do have Acrobat Reader, so I suppose I have a printer "driver" --
software! -- for that.

No, you don't. Only if you have a program that creates PDFs. (The "driver"
drives or controls the printer, so printer driver). I have not figured out
what the OS X PDF creator uses as a printer driver.

I'll look into it, but as Daiya mentioned,
this unusual spacing between WORDS is not correct, and shouldn't be
looking the way it does, regardless of which printer it's linked to.
At least I think that's what she was implying...

It is what I was implying. Remove the obvious stuff to email me direct:
Daiya Mitchell

Can you email me:
A page or so as a Word 2004 doc
The same page or so as a PDF.

Actually, it's possible that the OS X PDF creator will do a better job of
spacing the letters than your photo printer driver.

Suzanne wrote:
The printer affects what you see on the screen before you print because Word
aims to be WYSIWYG, and this depends on the printer (driver) selected. It's
possible that a "photo printer" is not ideal for text printing, but that
would just be a wild guess.

I actually kinda had that wild guess as well. Like 10 years ago, inkjets did
a horrible job of right-justification but lasers did it fine.

--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: http://www.word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/