Tuesday, March 18

How to insert fractions in my patterns, designs and instructions?

Have ever wondered how to get ALL of your fractions to look like fractions instead of numbers divided by a slash?

If you use MS Word then you may have seen that some of your fractions like 1/2 convert once you hit the space bar.  Those are already built in for us by Microsoft.  For those of us that sew, knit, crochet or craft and build, we use a lot more than just the few built in.

Did you know that in  Word you can add to the automatic or AutoCorrect list?  I found this quite useful support article for Microsoft Word that offers several ways to achieve a fraction looking fraction.  Thanks Microsoft!  BUT, for those that don't have MS Word, option three in the article may be applicable to other document writing programs that can create superscript and subscript font size.  Essentially, you type your fraction as the regular font then highlight the numerator and make it superscript then highlight the denominator and make it subscript.  Remember to highlight just the numbers individually and leave the slash the regular font size.  There ya go!

Another note:  In the instructions in the article for add an AutoCorrect Entry in Word (as of the writing of this post) are a bit off for Word 2007.  Follow the instructions in the article to add your fractions to the AutoCorrect list, but you can find the list for AutoCorrect by;

  1. Clicking the OFFICE BUTTON in the upper left corner of Word
  2. Click on WORD OPTIONS at the bottom of the dialog box
  3. Click on PROOFING
  4. Click on AUTOCORRECT OPTIONS
  5. Click on the AUTOCORRECT TAB
I hope this helps!