Overlining Characters

It is not uncommon to underline characters in your documents. (This is typically done for some sort of emphasis.) Overlining characters, however, is a bit more tricky. Normally you use overlining for documents about electronics, where an overline indicates that the signal line is "active low."

There are many ways you can overline your characters, including searching for special fonts that include the overlines or using the equation editor supplied with Word. These solutions, however, can lead to additional problems. For instance, using a special font means that the actual characters used won't match the characters used in the rest of your document. The best solution we have found is to use special field commands supplied with Word. For instance, if you wanted to use an overline on the W character, you could do the following:

1. Position the insertion point where you want the overlined character to appear.
2. Press CTRL+F9 to insert field braces.
3. Type EQ \x \to(W).
4. Delete the extra spaces around what you typed (between the characters and the field braces).
5. Press SHIFT+F9 to show the results of the field code.

To change the character displayed, simply change the W in the field to a different character. A similar approach is to use the overline character and use a field to position it "on top of" another character. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Position the insertion point where you want the overlined character to appear.
2. Press CTRL+F9 to insert field braces.
3. Type EQ \o(W,).
4. Position the insertion point between the comma and the closing parenthesis
5. Hold down the ALT key as you use the numeric keypad to type 0175. This inserts an overscore character.
6. Delete any extra spaces appearing in the field.
7. Press SHIFT+F9 to show the results of the field code.

Depending on the fonts you are using, either of the foregoing may result in overlines that are a bit too long for your liking. If you want an overline that is more closely related to the size of the character you are using, try these steps (again using fields):

1. Position the insertion point where you want the overlined character to appear.
2. Press CTRL+F9 to insert field braces.
3. Type EQ \o(W,).
4. Between the comma and the closing parenthesis, press CTRL+F9 again. This places a second field, this one within the first field.
5. Type EQ \s\up10(_).
6. Delete any extra spaces within the two field braces.
7. Press SHIFT+F9 twice to show the results of the field code.

Regardless of which method you use, you can select the field and assign it to an AutoText entry so that it appears automatically when you type the entry.