Fine print. A fresh immigrant might interpret that phrase as ‘lovely handwriting’. A seasoned American knows better. It’s a negative term. Nobody likes fine print.
Does it feel like computer text is getting finer and finer? I think so. When I type an email, it looks like fine print to me. When I increase the font, it’s so disproportionate from the program text that it looks like my email is yelling.
Changing the text size is a basic necessity of digital media. We are not holding a one-ounce piece of paper eight inches from our face. We are stretching our eyesight to reach devices propped on nearby furniture, or maybe our belly. We need to enlarge the print accordingly. There are various ways to dial it up.
This PDF likely offers you a magnifying glass icon. Kindle fans love the AA icons on e-readers. I love to zoom in on web pages with ctrl + and ctrl –. (ctrl 0 gets you back to default size.) But darn it, our native computer screen is still controlled by operating system designers who apparently like fine print. My neck is deformed from leaning forward to see my options.
Adding insult to injury, it seems those designers don’t want us to see the setting to de-fine the fine print they designed. One of my Computer Tutor students ventured in to tackle this problem. It really is a problem. In Windows Settings, we obediently choose Display Settings. As expected, Windows (designers) tell us we can change the size of text, etc. here:
Whoa! This ‘Display’ setting bloats everything! Some things fall right out of view. Have you ever magnified your screen, only to lose the Save and Close buttons? Over the years, I have followed the Display Settings several times to this wonky end. I found victory at least once, but couldn’t find it again. Now I remember why I can’t remember how to do it. The direct answer is a prank, so I give up and go get a drink, feeling like an angry dinosaur named Dumbo.
Well, thank you, Computer Tutor student for inspiring persistence. Together for moral support, we ventured back into the abyss of Microsoft Windows Settings. Having exhausted the Display options, I typed ‘text’ into the Settings search box.
With direct pressure, Windows said, “Did you mean, Make text size bigger?”
Um, is that different from Change the size of text? Apparently. The Display options magically coughed up more fine print:
Make text bigger, or Make everything bigger. Ain’t that somethin’? It’s like a secret handshake. While I grumbled about language abuse, Student admired the new big words on his laptop. “I love this,” he said.
Now I pass this secret handshake on to my PC peeps. To de-fine your fine print without extra bloat, go into Windows Settings and search ‘text’.