Have you been learning lots of new things about working with text? I hope so! (If you haven’t read about Text Myths #1-20, start here). Today we’re going to learn about how to text edit in smarter ways by busting 5 more myths. We’ll focus on how and when to choose font attributes, how to mix fonts and sizes within a single text box, altering the space between letters, ways to use bold, italic or underline when you don’t see the option, and how to alter the line length. Lots to do, lots to do!
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Text Myth #21
“You have to choose your font, text size and other attributes after you type the words”
This is a little-known Silhouette fact. You can select all the following before you even begin typing:
- font
- text size
- justification
- bold
- italic
- underline
- text direction
- character spacing
- line spacing
- kerning
- fill color or pattern
- line color, style or thickness
Here’s how:
- Make sure nothing is selected on your drawing area.
- Use the tools in the Quick Access Toolbar and/or panels to select any fill or line attributes you want for your text.
- Click the Text Create icon on the left. When you do that, the font options show in the Quick Access Toolbar. Select the ones you want for font, size, justification, etc. For any of the options NOT in the QAT, you can select them in the Text Style panel.
- Click on your design area where you want to place the text and begin typing your word, or paste any text you’ve copied from another location (more on the latter in our next lesson). The words will have all those attributes you selected.
NOTE: The attributes will remain in place until (a) you change them or (b) restart the software. That means any shape you draw or text you type will have the same fills, line styles, font choices, etc.
The advantage of doing this is that if you are creating multiple text boxes, you don’t have to keep changing all the attributes after you type.
Here’s a short video to show you how this works.
Text Myth #22
“All words in a text box have to have the same attributes”
Here’s one a lot of Silhouette users don’t know. You can mix any combo of fonts and font sizes within your text box. You can also mix kerning, bold, italic, underline, fill and line style/color/thickness.
While you’re in Text Edit mode, click where you want to start the new attribute and drag across all letters you want it to affect. This highlights the text in blue.
Then choose a font, font size or other attribute within the Quick Access Toolbar or the applicable panel. Here I’ve change the font, fill color, line color and underline.
This is a way to make larger capitals at the beginning of a word, shrink something like an “&” in the middle of the text box, mix several fonts. You can even do it on a space so that you alter the amount of distance between some letters and not between others.
Text Myth #23
“You can’t alter the distance between letters or lines of text”
As with pretty much any program that works with fonts and text, you can alter the spacing of characters and lines within a text box in Silhouette Studio. You’ll find the options at the bottom of the Text Style panel. Use the slider bars, arrows or type in your own numbers. Any of it works.
Unlike the attributes we discussed in the previous myth, you can only have 1 setting for the entire text box for line and character spacing. In other words, you can’t have some lines or letters closer together than others in a single text box. This is one thing that’s different from word processing programs which often have options for both line and paragraph spacing. If you can’t get it the way you like, then create multiple text boxes and layer them over one another.
Kerning, which you can actually mix within a single text box, is a way the software can automatically fix some spacing for you. The icon here is really helpful in showing you what happens. If the letter “A” is next to a letter “L,” things look normal.
But look what happens when that same “A” is next to a “V.” Because the right side of the “A” and the left side of the “V” have the same angle, it looks like there’s too much space even when the “V” starts right where the “A” ends side to side.
If I turn on Kerning, the software automatically reduces the amount of space. It looks more natural, even though in actuality the starting point of the “V” is before the ending point of the “A.”
Many fonts these days are built to take this into account, but it’s good practice to keep this setting on.
Text Myth #24
“If your font doesn’t have a bold, underline or italic option in the Text Style panel, then you’re out of luck”
There are many fonts that do not have these options within the Text Style panel itself. But there’s a workaround for each one.
Bold
To make your letters bold, you can do a slight offset of each one. The resulting offset will be image and not text, so you’ll want to keep that original text box around (but pull it aside or set it to No Cut), or make a sticky note with the info about the font and size you used.
It’s often necessary to separate the letters a bit more before you create the offset. You can use that character and line spacing we talked about in Text Myth #22.
Underline
The Silhouette Studio software used to just put a 1-dimensional line under text when you chose Underline. As far as I can tell, that has now changed on the most recent versions and it instead puts a long, thin rectangle there on MOST fonts (but NOT ALL). And that rectangle is set on Cut instead of Cut Edge. There are times with this default isn’t useful.
- If you do any modification to the text, such as welding a script font, the underline goes away because it is no longer editable text. For a much better way to do it so that it remains text, be sure to read Part 6 of this series.
- The software does in the same sized rectangle and location for every font. On a sketch font, you need only a line or a really thin rectangle. The normal rectangle looks weird.
- Sometimes the rectangle will actually overlap the bottom of the letters.
- Some fonts, particularly older ones/ones not created well/ones created in Font Creator, still have the single slit as an underline.
For these reasons, you may need to create your own underline by creating long, thin rectangles under them when cutting, or straight 1D lines when sketching. Don’t get those mixed up. If you’re trying to cut something out, a single line only cuts a slit in your material. You need a 2-dimensional shape such as a rectangle when cutting.
Another way to do it for cutting is to draw a straight line, raise the line thickness, then choose Cut Edge or Auto weld when cutting. One reason I prefer the thin rectangle method is that when you resize your whole design, it can throw off your proportions if you do it this way. The lines will retain their same thickness, even if you make it smaller in overall size. I will state, however, that the advantage of doing it this way is that you can alter how the ends of the lines look (squared or rounded).
Italic
This one requires Designer Edition and above. You can use a feature called Shear to tilt your letters. This is the last tab in the Transform panel.
Select your text box, then adjust the slant to the right so that your letters look like they are italicized. Notice that my bounding box is tilted, which is the tip-off that I’ve chosen to shear it.
Text Myth #25
“You can’t edit the words after you’ve clicked off the text box”
This is another one that drove me batty as a beginner. I’d type something, and then want to change it later but could NOT figure out how. Let me save your sanity by showing you to use the Text Edit mode.
There are 2 different modes when working with a text box: Text Edit mode and Selection/Resizing mode. If you look at the box around the word you can easily see the difference.
What you can change about the text and how you change it depends on which mode you’re in. There are some things that can vary in the text box. Those are the ones I described in Text Myth #22 above. The other attributes that are specific to text – line and character spacing and justification –have to all be the same within a single box. The same applies to Shear.
Text Edit mode
In Text Edit mode, you can change the wording, force words to a new line/fit more on a line and use the Text to Path feature. The flashing blue bar indicates the cursor location. In other words, that tells you where any typing you do will show up. You can click in a different area in the text box, or use the arrow keys on your computer keyboard, to get to a new starting location for the text edit.
You can also change just part of the text box by highlighting it as discussed in Text Myth #22. If you want to change everything in the box, then you have to highlight all the words, so it’s easier to just use Selection/Resizing mode.
Here’s what you change in Text Edit mode (items with the # symbol indicate that you need to highlight the portion of the text on which you want to change that attribute):
- In the Quick Access Toolbar
- Font #
- Font size #
- Bold/Italic/Underline #
- Justification
- Fill #
- Line color, style or thickness #
- In the Text Style panel
- Font #
- Font size #
- Bold/Italic/Underline #
- Justification
- Horizontal or vertical orientation
- Line or character spacing
- Kerning off or on
- In the Fill panel
- Color, gradient or pattern fill #
- In the Line Style panel
- Line style, thickness or color #
- In the Transform panel
- Alignment on the page (left, center, etc.)
- Width and/or height of the entire box
- Rotation of the text box
- Movement to a specific spot on the page
- Shear
Selection/Resizing mode
Any action you take in this mode affects all the text in the box. You have the standard corner boxes to resize the width and/or height of the entire box. You also have the rotation circle for rotating the box and see the dimensions of the text box (but don’t forget Text Myth #1).
Here’s what you can change in this mode:
- In the Quick Access Toolbar
- Font
- Font size
- Bold/Italic/Underline
- Justification
- Fill
- Line color, style or thickness
- In the Text Style panel
- Font
- Font size
- Bold/Italic/Underline
- Justification
- Horizontal or vertical orientation
- Line or character spacing
- Kerning off or on
- In the Fill panel
- Color, gradient or pattern fill
- In the Line Style panel
- Line style, thickness or color
- In the Transform panel
- Alignment on the page (left, center, etc.)
- Width and/or height of the entire box
- Rotation of the text box
- Movement to a specific spot on the page
- Shear
PRO TIP: With the text box selected in either Text Edit or Selection/Resizing mode, the Quick Access Toolbar doesn’t have the options for sizing, location and aligning. That’s because it has the font options instead. Do it in the Transform panel. Likeswise, when it’s grouped with regular images or another text box, the font options don’t show.
What mode am I in and how do I get to the other one?
Use that clue of what the outside of the box looks like to figure out which mode you’re in.
- You’re in Text Edit mode when you first begin typing on the page. To switch to Selection/Resizing mode, click off and back on the text box just once.
- If the text box isn’t selected at all (so in neither mode) and you click on it only once, you’ll be in Selection/Resizing mode.
- If you are in Selection/Resizing mode, or aren’t already working with the text box at all, then double click quickly on it to get to Text Edit mode.
- Or, if you have the box selected (so you’re in Selection/Resizing Mode), you can use the right click menu to select “Edit Text” to get into Text Edit mode.
PRO TIP: When you double click quickly on a regular image, you get into Point Edit mode. That’s all those little black dots. If you click on a regular design and don’t get that, it’s because it’s several designs grouped together. Since a text box is a grouping of letters, even just a single letter (see Text Myth #2), you have to ungroup to get the points. But when you do, it’s an image instead of text so you can’t change any of its text attributes.
Up Next
I’m betting you learned something new today, since much of this information isn’t well-known. In our next lesson, we’ll cover our final 5 myths. I’ll bust one of the biggest text myths of all in Silhouette Studio (ya, saving the best for last). Don’t miss it!
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