I am working on a sample title page for our students to use in formatting their papers. I am trying to create a "ruler" in a vertical text box that shows


6 pts
12 pts
18 pts
24 pts
etc.
I am having a very hard time, with everything being Times New Roman 12 pt., lining up a single line of text with any of these numbers.
If the entire page is in a 12 pt. font, then the page, and presumably the gridlines, should be divided into lines of 6 points high, should it not?

As I understand it, there should be 72 points in an inch, at least if a font is Times New Roman 12 pt. However, I'm running into some difficulties. I turned on gridlines but I cannot tell what size the boxes are. They don't correspond to any wording on the page, which is all 12 pt. Times New Roman. That is, they are clearly not = 6 pts. verticially. 1. How big is a gridline box?
2. Arial and Verdana are larger than Times New Roman when each of these is 12 pts. That is, apparently the size of a "point" depends upon he font size. So how can anyone say that there are 72 points in an inch? Further, when I look at a page done this way, 72 points looks like it is longer than an inch in Times New Roman 12 Pts.

So the gridline boxes don't mach 6 pts each, which is the height of a single line? Or is a single line 12 points? It depends on the font size, right?

I wish MS Word did not have this concept of points. It makes life difficult and that's about all, so far as I can tell. Thanks for any help.

See https://practicaltypography.com/point-size.html.

It is not Microsoft Word that has the concept of points, it is typography.

There are 72 points in an inch and a 12-point font should be 1/6 of an inch high. However, it is up to the maker of the font to fit that considering ascenders, descenders, and space between lines.

What is it you are trying to teach your students with this tool?

Times New Roman is not a good font to be teaching them to use. Try Garamond instead.

Hi Charles,

Thanks for your responses. I was looking around and found a page on typography that said much the same thing you did. Okay, so a inch = 72 pts.

Context: I am the Reference and Instructional Services at my seminary. It's my job to help students follow our local standards for formatting papers, built mostly on Turabian 8th ed. There are special rules for title pages. The first line, directly below the 1" margin, has the school's name. Exactly 48 points below that is the title of the paper. 72 pts. below the title is the type of paper being submitted. Etc. I did not create this standard, which goes well past Turabian 8.

Times New Roman 12 pts. is the seminary's requirement. I wasn't at that meeting or the meetings of publishers that require this same font and size. Otherwise, I would have vociferously objected. I personally loathe, hate, and despise Times New Roman. I find serif fonts much harder to read than sans serif fonts. I tend to work in Arial and if I need to submit my work someplace, I do a global change to TNR.

What I am trying to accomplish to show a model title page that has a "ruler" down the size, which highlights the places to put things. So if the first line below the bottom of the margin is 12 pts. high, the title needs to start at 60 pts. below the margin. So I want to highlight 60 pts., since the school name is fixed and 48 pts is 48 pts. 12+48 = 60. I am having a difficult time, however, lining these up exactly.

In theory, the "60" and all the pt values above and below it should be in Times New Roman 12. If I make those numbers 12 pts., however, they don't line up correctly with the text. I set the paragraph for the school name to be followed by 48 pts. but when I go down to 60 pts., this does not line up with the first line of the title at all.

I have attached this sample title page so you an see what I mean. My first page only treated the name of the school as 6 pts. but in a 12 pt. font, the bottom of the school name should line up using a physical ruler with the bottom of 12 in my custom ruler. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I changed the sizes of the point numbers to try to make them line up, which should be unnecessary, but it seemed like it was necessary. Thanks for any suggestions on how to fix this so that I can show our masters-level students what to do. Thanks.

Should a single box in the grid be six points high? I'm in Word 2016 at work if that matters. Thanks.

doctorduncan

You might want to edit your second post to attach the sample.
Please reduce the size from full page to make it easier to view.
How to attach a screenshot or file in this forum.

Look into the Cover Page Building Blocks in Word. Once you have a good model, you can save it as a Cover Page in a template and let your students use it. Look at the ones that are built-in and study their components and methods. A key component is the document property content controls.

You should set it for 12 pt TNR with either no space between paragraphs or multiples of 12.

I know a lot of people prefer sans serif fonts, but with proportional fonts, there is research that body text is more readable in serif fonts. I generally use a serif font for body and a sans serif for headings.

If your students are going to be working in Word, introduce them to Shauna Kelly's site. It will save them a lot of frustration. Basic Concepts of Microsoft Word - from Shauna Kelly

Introduce them to styles, especially the built-in heading styles.

• Why use Microsoft Word’s built-in heading styles? by Shauna Kelly
• Understanding Styles in Microsoft Word
• StyleRef Field

I think in 20+ years of using Word, I've only turned on the grid lines less than five times. I'm not the one to discuss this.

In that case, the simplest and surest approach would be to develop a template (a proper Word template, not just a document called a template) with both a page layout and a set of Paragraph Styles that meets your seminary's requirements, then provide that to the students for their use. The only thing you'll then need to teach the students about the template's usage is how to use Word Styles properly.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

I agree with Paul's recommendation.
Of course that means you'll need to learn styles yourself before you try writing the template.