Why does Helvetica 12 looks so much better in TextEdit than in Word X?

[Arno Wouters]

r rather: what do I do to make Helvetica 12 in Word X (under OS X
10.2.8) look as nice as it does in TextEdit?

Fonts in Word X are often quite different from fonts in TextEdit,
NoteTaker, OmniOutliner and other programs.

For instance, in Word's font menus I find the following different types
of Helvetica, Helvetica CE, Helvetica CY, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica Neue
Black Condensed, Helvetica Neue Bold Condensed, Helvetica Neue Light,
Helvetica Neue Ultralight. In the other programs I only have Helvetica,
Helvetica CY and Helvetica Neue.

In Word I can have Geneva in regular, bold, italic and combinations
thereof. In the other programs I can have Geneva only in regular.

More importantly, the fonts look quite different in Word than in the
other programs. For instance, when I use Helvetica 12 (which used to be
the default font in many templates I have) in Word it is difficult to
read, smutty and ugly. In the other programs it is the most readable
fonts of all the fonts I have! What can I do about this?

Oh, I have 'Enable quartz text smoothing' checked in Word's preferences
(unchecking this gives a better readable but uglier appearance, quite
different from the one in the other program's). Kerning is off (checking
it at 12 points does not make much difference). In the system
preferences (general) the font smoothing style is set to medium (which
seems the recommended setting for the LCD screen of my G4 iMac) with
turn off text smoothing for font sizes 8 and smaller.

 

[Tim Murray]

For instance, in Word's font menus I find the following different types

of Helvetica, Helvetica CE, Helvetica CY, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica Neue
Black Condensed, Helvetica Neue Bold Condensed, Helvetica Neue Light,
Helvetica Neue Ultralight. In the other programs I only have Helvetica,
Helvetica CY and Helvetica Neue.

First, are you using any font management software? Do you have multiple types
installed for the same font, such as the same thing in Type 1, dfont,
TrueType, etc?

I, for one, am not having a great time with the dfonts. I tucked them away
and went to Suitcase and load the Type 1s instead.

In Word I can have Geneva in regular, bold, italic and combinations
thereof. In the other programs I can have Geneva only in regular.

Word might be showing you faux, or fake, fonts -- fattening up a roman to get
a bold or slanting a roman to get an italic.