John writes:

Hi,

I am just starting an ezine related to my book Fixing Your Feet and have a basic question. As I read some articles on writing your ezine, it says to use a fixed-width font, like Courier. Yet when I received many...ezines they seem to be in other fonts, most of which are not fixed-width. Please clarify the best way to go. I have not ordered TextPad yet. Is it one of the easiest editors to use for ezines? Thanks...

John Vonhof

Fixing Your Feet: Prevention and Treatments for Athletes; Second Edition 
http://www.footworkpub.com

………………………………….

Hi John,

If you use a fixed-width font, it allows you to line up text on different lines by using spaces to force the text to a particular place on the line: 

like this 
        for example. 

Some people (like me) choose to receive their email in plain text format whenever possible (and YahooGroups, for one, allows you to select that option). If you typed your newsletter in Times New Roman, a variable-width font, and carefully spaced anything like the example above, it would get distorted when converted into my plain-text, fixed-width font. A fixed-width font gives you the most control over how your readers see the email. 

If you had type the above example in Times New Roman, spacing it nicely, by the time it got to my plain-text inbox, it would look: 

like this 
           for example

You don't need any special software for this. Just save your WP file as 'text only'. 

For my newsletter I use NotePad, the cheapo, basic WP program that has been on PCs forever. The beauty of NotePad is that it's impossible to do anything BUT 'text only'. This stops me from accidentally inserting italics or other things that won't translate into a plain text email. 

I created a template with my section headings and dividers, and I simply paste the new text into each section, every issue. 

One thing I would recommend, is forcing line breaks at around 52 characters. I say this because many email accounts automatically breaks lines at a set number of characters (my web-based email account breaks it at 52 characters). Your outbound email software probably has a setting hidden somewhere that automatically breaks your lines too. If that is set at 70 characters, I end up reading your email like this. 

blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah 
blah blah blah 
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah 
blah blah blah 

which is uncomfortable and puts me off reading it. So, pretend you're typing on a typewriter and hit 'return' after every 52 characters (a simple way to know where that is, is to put a line of 52 dashes above your text, and hit 'return' every time you come near it).

Good luck!

Julie

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