Text and Font Options

General options for text formatting.

If you have a large block of text containing no explicit newline characters, then the Wolfram System will automatically break your text into a sequence of lines. The option (RefLink[PageWidth, paclet:ref/PageWidth]) specifies how long each line should be allowed to be.

Settings for the (RefLink[PageWidth, paclet:ref/PageWidth]) option in cells and notebooks.

The option (RefLink[TextAlignment, paclet:ref/TextAlignment]) allows you to specify how you want successive lines of text to be aligned. Since the Wolfram System normally breaks text only at space or punctuation characters, it is common to end up with lines of different lengths. Normally the variation in lengths will give your text a ragged boundary. But the Wolfram System allows you to adjust the spaces in successive lines of text so as to make the lines more nearly equal in length. The setting for (RefLink[TextJustification, paclet:ref/TextJustification]) gives the fraction of extra space which the Wolfram System is allowed to add. (RefLink[TextJustification, paclet:ref/TextJustification])->1 leads to "full justification" in which all complete lines of text are adjusted to be exactly the same length.

Settings for the (RefLink[TextAlignment, paclet:ref/TextAlignment]) option.

Here is text with (RefLink[TextAlignment, paclet:ref/TextAlignment])->(RefLink[Left, paclet:ref/Left]) and (RefLink[TextJustification, paclet:ref/TextJustification])->0.

With (RefLink[TextAlignment, paclet:ref/TextAlignment])->(RefLink[Center, paclet:ref/Center]) the text is centered.

(RefLink[TextJustification, paclet:ref/TextJustification])->1 adjusts word spacing so that both the left and right edges line up.

(RefLink[TextJustification, paclet:ref/TextJustification])->0.5 reduces the degree of raggedness, but does not force the left and right edges to be precisely lined up.

With (RefLink[Hyphenation, paclet:ref/Hyphenation])->(RefLink[True, paclet:ref/True]) the text is hyphenated.

When you enter a block of text in a Wolfram System notebook, the Wolfram System will treat any explicit newline characters that you type as paragraph breaks. The option (RefLink[ParagraphIndent, paclet:ref/ParagraphIndent]) allows you to specify how much you want to indent the first line in each paragraph. By giving a negative setting for (RefLink[ParagraphIndent, paclet:ref/ParagraphIndent]), you can make the first line stick out to the left relative to subsequent lines.

Options for spacing between lines of text.

Here is some text with the default setting (RefLink[LineSpacing, paclet:ref/LineSpacing])->{1,1}, which inserts just 1 printer's point of extra space between successive lines.

With (RefLink[LineSpacing, paclet:ref/LineSpacing])->{1,5} the text is "looser".

(RefLink[LineSpacing, paclet:ref/LineSpacing])->{2,0} makes the text double-spaced.

With (RefLink[LineSpacing, paclet:ref/LineSpacing])->{1,-2} the text is tight.

Options for fonts.

Some typical font family names.

Some settings of font options.

The Wolfram System allows you to specify the font that you want to use in considerable detail. Sometimes, however, the particular combination of font families and variations that you request may not be available on your computer system. In such cases, the Wolfram System will try to find the closest approximation it can. There are various additional options, such as FontPostScriptName, that you can set to help the Wolfram System find an appropriate font. In addition, you can set (RefLink[FontSubstitutions, paclet:ref/FontSubstitutions]) to be a list of rules that give replacements to try for font family names.

There are a great many fonts available for ordinary text. But for special technical characters, and even for Greek letters, far fewer fonts are available. The Wolfram System system includes fonts that were built to support all of the various special characters that are used by the Wolfram System. There are three versions of these fonts: ordinary (like Times), monospaced (like Courier), and sans serif (like Helvetica).

For a given text font, the Wolfram System tries to choose the special character font that matches it best. You can help the Wolfram System to make this choice by giving rules for "FontSerifed" and "FontMonospaced" in the setting for the (RefLink[FontProperties, paclet:ref/FontProperties]) option. You can also give rules for "FontEncoding" to specify explicitly from what font each character is to be taken.