Enclosed characters - Microsoft Word

Question

Hi all,

When using the "enclose characters" function in Word, my circles are not surrounding the text at all (see pictured), but at home, this is not a problem, even when 2 characters are involved.

I know you can draw a circle around any text using the "shapes" tools, but having the "enclose characters" function working properly would be much easier for us in terms of formatting, treating the character as text, rather than text surrounded by a shape.

If anyone could provide insight into this matter, that would be much appreciated!

Regards,

Alvin

Answer 1

Characters are enclosed by the use of an eq field as shown below

and, to have them display properly, you nearly always need to modify the formatting of the components.

To achieve the following:

I selected the circle and increased its font size from the original 16.5 pts to 28 pts and I then selected the 1 and raised the font by 2 pts.

You will need to use ALT+F9 to toggle on the display of the field codes to see the eq field construction and to be able to select the individual components to apply the formatting changes to them.

Answer 2

Hi Doug,

Thank you so much for the quick reply! It is much appreciated!

I've certainly seen your recommendation online before, and yes it does work, however, I literally did the SAME thing on my home computer on the same program (Word 2016), and below are the results without any adjusting. Worked for all fonts, worked for all sizes.

I wonder if there's an extra setting that I need to select for it to work correctly (without alt+F9 and messing around with the font sizes) on my school computer.

Anyone out there with a solution, I'd love to hear from you!

Regards,

Alvin

Answer 3

I don't know the answer either, but it may be worth looking in detail at the fonts and sizes that Word uses for the two key parts of the EQ field on your home/non-home systems respectively.

Because when I select the circle and look at the font, it is in the "Asian Text" font defined for the Normal paragraph style (which happens to be the style of the paragraph I am working with), whereas the enclosed text part of the field is in the "ordinary" font - i.e. in your example it would be in Calibri). Because the circle size may vary from font to font, this could be something that works better when a specific pair of Asian/non-Asian fonts is chosen for the paragraph style.

Other than that, what I see Word doing here is approximately as follows:

If you choose 'Shrink text', then

 a. leave the font size of the circle (i.e. the Asian font character) as the size you see in the ribbon (i.e. 11 in this case)

 b. do not subscript/superscript the circle

 c. shrink the enclosed text to around 7/10 the font size

 d. superscript the enclosed text

If you choose 'Enlarge symbol', then

 a. leave the font size of the enclosed text as the size you see in the ribbon (i.e. 11 in this case)

 b. do not subscript/superscript the enclosed text

 c. expand the circle to around 3/2 the font size.

 d. subscript the circle.

Whether Word changes that algorithm depending on other factors/settings, I do not know.