Michele Brannon-Hamilton's Blog

I like to think of fonts as the added decorative touch on an otherwise bland text-based page. You can do so much with fonts like change the size or the style. If you don’t like the colour, you can change that too.

What fonts don’t do well is translate from program to program or format to format. That means I can create a well-developed page with underlined headings and italicized key words but when I move it to a new location, the design may be lost in the transfer.

I found this out when I designed a course in Moodle. I forgot that Moodle was web-based and Word wasn’t – that means my stuff morphed when I cut it out of Word and pasted it into Moodle. Font changed itself and spaces between paragraphs disappeared. I cut, pasted and resaved but to no avail.

Since then, I’ve discovered a few useful pointers that I’d like to share. One, create your pages in a web-based program to avoid these problems altogether. Two, check your pages in more than one browser. Three, ask for help and search online for answers. There are many great Moodle sites online with people who will help you if they can.

Words can be a lot of fun once you understand how basic coding works. Once you’ve figured out the basics, let yourself have some fun with the pages and if you really want to play around with letters, try Wordle – a silly word program you can use for free at http://www.wordle.net/. Be patient and have fun!