Customize Font Styles To Improve Readability and Increase Productivity

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Customizing the "Emphasis" Font Style To Improve Readability and Increase Productivity 

Intro:

Most LibreOffice users—indeed, most users of all office suites, and their word processing components—are clueless when it comes to knowing how to really use the software. When using Writer, specifically, few know how to use the built-in Styles, much less how and when to create Custom Styles. That's a shame, because billions of documents are created each year that are more difficult to share, more difficult to read, and are just plain ol' butt-ugly as a result of "Styles Ignorance." Today I will focus on what might seem like a minor customization in Styles, but one that can both save the document creator a lot of time if your job consistently and frequently involves working with documents, and will improve the readability of any documents in which words and phrases frequently appear in italics.

The Issue:

You have a document in which one or more words or phrases are in italics. But the font you want to use as the Default seems to create italicized words in a way such that makes the italicized word or phrase look smaller than the surrounding content. 

Example: 

This is a sentence using Libre Baskerville 11 Pt.Default size; this is a phrase in Libre Baskerville 11 pt. italics. 

Do you see how the words in italics look considerably smaller than the words not in italics, even though both are set for 11 pt type? 

The Solution:

In LibreOffice Writer, on the right-side of the screen (just to the right of the scroll-bar), click on the arrow to "Show" the Navigator. At the far right side of the Navigator screen, click on the "Styles" icon. That creates some menu icons directly beneath the word Styles (in bold). Click on the icon for "Character Styles." In the list, right-click on "Emphasis" and select "Edit Style." Click on Font, then Libre Baskerville. Click on the drop-down for "Size" and select 11 pt. Now, in the size box, manually change 11 to 11.5 (you could also choose 12 pt. but my view is that 12 pt. makes the italics look too large). Next, click "Apply," then click "Okay.

You have now modified your Emphasis character style in such a way that italicized words and phrases when using Libre Baskerville font do not have an irritatingly smaller look than the normal or Default words and phrases in the document. Note: You must apply the Emphasis Style (not simply click on the "Italics" button in your Writer menu) to each italicized word or phrase. To make that easier to do, we suggest that you always have the Styles menu bar open in Writer: View / Toolbars / Formatting).

Does it really matter?\

Maybe not in all cases, and, frankly, in many cases the reader does not care. But in legal and formal documents, you want (or should want) your fonts and font sizes (i.e., Styles) to be consistent.