Hi Carol,
The convention is to use serif fonts for printed material (ie. reports);
however, it is common for people to be unconventional these days!
If you want a serif font, try either Times New Roman or Courier New. The
latter has finer lines than TNR, and will look "lighter" in a large block of
text. Both are readable in printed form down to 4 pt; however, for
on-screen preview at 100% zoom, or in forms (rather than reports), they
become unreadable below about 6 pt - however, this is dependent on screen
(and graphics driver) resolution. Both are "standard" fonts, and should be
available on any machine.
If you want a non-serif font, try either Arial or Tahoma. The latter has
slightly wider characters, so will take more room to display the same text.
Comments about readability and availability are as for the serif fonts.
All these fonts are TrueType fonts. You will probably also find some
system fonts (non-TT) available, such as MS Serif and MS Sans Serif. These
work OK when printed, but have some real problems when viewed on-screen. In
report preview (at 100% zoom), both appear squashed and overwritten up to
about 8 pt; in forms, the MS Sans Serif displays at the same size for all
point sizes from 4 to 8, while the MS Serif is distorted below about 8 pt.
You should consider readability in forms, even if you want the fonts only
for reports, since in design mode a report is essentially a form - you can't
change the zoom factor to view small text in detail. This means that some
fonts may be unreadable in design mode; this makes life hard for you ;-)
Your question is the subject of lots of discussion and debate. If you want
to pursue the topic further, try Googling for style guide, printing, font,
etc. And you'll probably find lots of other fonts available on your system.
The font drop-down on the Format toolbar (at least for recent verions of
Windows) will show each font as a sample of what you'll get. If you don't
like any of my suggestions, pick something that appeals - and test to make
sure it works in all the situation where you'll use it.
HTH,
Rob
"Carol Grismore" <CarolGrismore@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:BA1B0181-2ADB-4D2B-9FDC-83F1D44B4C76@microsoft.com...
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