Oh, So That's How It Works!

HOW-TO: Specialized TrueType Fonts

David A. Gray, MBA
Chief Wizard, WizardWrx

As you scrolled through the lists of TrueType fonts installed on your computer, you have probably seen those TrueType fonts with such strange names as Wingdings, Webdings, Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, and others, and wondered why they are there, and how you can use them. Until now, using them has been anything but easy.

Like all TrutType fonts, these and other specialized fonts correspond to the keys on your keyboard. But which key goes with which symbol? I feel your frustration, and it has motivated me, at last, to create a cheat sheet.

The left column of the sheet lists every character key on a standard English keyboard. Adjacent columns, each headed with the name of a font, show each character, rendered in that font, opposite the corresponding keyboard character.

The fonts are divided into groups, according to the origin of the font, as follows.

• Ships with Microsoft Windows and/or Office
  • Marlett
  • MS LineDraw
  • MS Outlook
  • MT Extra
  • OCR A Extended
  • Symbol
  • Wingdings
  • Webdings
  • Wingdings 2
  • Wingdings 3
• RoadRunner
  • RRKeyCaps
  • RRKeyLetters
  • RRWinSymbols
• Ships with Memorex CD/DVD Labeler Kit
  • Sure Thing Symbols
  • Sure Thing DVD Symbols

The first group is self explanatory, but the other two deserve clarification.

• RoadRunner: These fonts are from RoadRunner Software, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Since I have lost contact with their author, Elizabeth A. Swoope, I am unsure if they are still available. If so, here is an electronic version of the keyboard mapping sheet that came with them. If not, but you are another of her customers, enjoy! Sixteen years after I bought my copy, I still use them.
• Ships with Memorex CD/DVD Labeler Kit: These fonts came with a Memorex CD and DVD labeling kit that I purchased late last year.

Since everyone can benefit from the fonts in the first group, I put them first in the spreadsheet. This placement ensures that they print on the first half of the printed version of the cheat sheet, and are closest to the keys.

There are two versions of the reference sheet, in Microsoft Excel and Adobe PDF formats.

Since I used Excel 2002 to create the Excel document, without using any of its more advanced features, it should open in any 32 bit version of Microsoft Excel. Although I have no means of testing, it should open in Excel for the Mac, too. Since I am unaware of any mechanism for embedding TrueType fonts in Excel documents, any of the fonts that are missing from your computer will be substituted with some other font.

The PDF version is formatted for Adobe Acrobat, version 1.3, which requires Adobe Reader, version 4 or later. Since PDF documents contain embedded font subsets, they should render correctly on any machine, regardless of the contents of your local font collection. These embedded fonts largely account for the larger size of the PDF file.

Both documents are formatted to print in landscape mode, requiring six pages to print the entire document. If you want a printed version of just the Windows fonts (those in the first group), print only the first three pages.

Although I could have compressed the table to fit onto fewer pages, I chose to set the body of the table in 11 point type, to make the symbols easier to see. Since the column labels are quite legible at smaller sizes, I set them in 9 point Tahoma, so that they occupied less horizontal space, allowing me to space the columns more closely.

Enjoy!