

If you use a limited number of fractions over and over again, the AutoCorrect approach is nice and easy. (How to do this has been covered in other issues of WordTips.) Simply make sure that the AutoCorrect entry is saved as formatted text, and you will be able to use your new fraction quickly and easily. Once you have created your fraction, the easiest way to use it is to define it as an AutoCorrect entry. You will need to look around and find the one you like the best. There are several good options for this "improved slash," depending on the font you are using. The reason you may want to do this is that the slash used in the single-character fonts built into Word (you remember-those created when you type the characters "1/2") uses a slash that is at a different angle than the slash shown when you simply type a slash.

Change the By setting (beside the Position pull-down list) to a value equal to approximately 40% of your base point size.Change the Position pull-down list to Raised.

The Character Spacing tab of the Font dialog box. Using this approach, the numerator would (of course) need to be raised a bit. For instance, if your text is 10-point, you would use 5-point if it is 11-point, you would use 5.5-point. A good rule of thumb is to simply make the font size 50% of whatever type size your normal text is. (It is just simpler that way.) You can, if you so desire, just adjust the point size of the font used for the numerator and denominator. First of all, you don't have to use superscript and subscript, if you don't want to. There are a couple of things to point out about these seemingly simple steps. Replace the slash with a different "slash-type" symbol, if desired.Select the denominator (the part to the right of the slash) and format it as subscript.Select the numerator (the part to the left of the slash) and format it as superscript.
#INSERT FRACTIONS INTO WORD DOC HOW TO#
Many of the formatting settings depend on which font you are using, but you can use the following steps as guidance for how to proceed: One way around this conundrum is to fiddle with the font characteristics of the numbers in your fraction so that the fraction appears as desired. Most fonts, however, don't have such characters for other less-common fractions. This is because Word replaces those characters with actual single-character font representations of those fractions. The same is true for other common fractions, such as 1/4 and 3/4. You may have noticed that if you type 1/2 in a Word document, the characters are converted automatically to a very nicely formatted fraction.
