Automatically improving display of fraction numbers in MS-Word (XP, 2003, 2007)

Word replaces typed fraction numbers such as ‘1/4’, ‘1/2’ and ‘3/4’ automatically with ‘¼’, ‘½’ and ‘¾’. But other ligatures for fractions are not known to the program.

For a lot of fractions there is no suitable predefined character. However, you can make these by yourself or use another solution. One way is to use the formula editor. It however creates real fractions and not the typographic ones with a slash. Some other special characters, like for ‘5/8’, are available in the font ‘Arial Unicode’, but there is no such character for less common fractions like ‘5/6’. Besides, the fraction does not appear in the same font as the rest of the text. Therefore, it is better to reproduce these using individual elements with the suitable formatting. For that, first enter the fraction in the form ‘5/6’. Then select the denominator and halve its font size. If the current text size is 12 pt for instance, click in the combination field ‘Font size’ in the ‘Formatting’ toolbar, enter the value ‘6’ and press [Enter]. Next, select the slash and make it ‘Italic’. Select the denominator and through ‘Format | Font’ in the ‘Font’ tab, assign it the ‘Superscript’ eff ect. Here as well, you must adjust the font size again. Since raised characters become small anyway, use a size of about 85 %, so, instead of 12 pt, use ‘10 pt’ in this case. Confirm with ‘OK’. When you need such formatting for a fraction number frequently, you can leave this task up to the auto correction. For that, select the completely formatted fraction without the adjacent spaces and go to ‘Tools | AutoCorrect Options’. In the ‘Replace’ field, enter the text given in the beginning. You can simply type in a fraction here like ‘5/6’, if the change must be continuous, or use a shortcut like ‘b5/6’, so that you can decide the format while entering it. Then activate the option ‘Format Text’ and click ‘Add’. Confirm the entry with ‘OK’ and repeat the steps for other commonly used fractions.

Note: Henceforth, Word will format the pre-defined fraction numbers automatically in flowing text if you wish. For larger font sizes, however, you have to adjust the formatting manually or make the corresponding additions in the AutoCorrect Options like ‘10 5/6’, ‘12 5/6’ and ‘14 5/6’, wherein the values before the hyphen is still the original font size.