How to Type Fractions in Illustrator

Performed on a Mac in Illustrator CS6
Time: 2:06

In this OneMinuteDigital.com tutorial I will show you how to make fractions in Illustrator. We can all type a 1/2 but how do we make a cute, tight little fraction in our layout like this: ½?  Just go to Type > Glyphs and look for your fraction.

It seems to me there used to be an easier way to do this – just find the right combination of key commands and – at least, on a Mac – create a smart key for it. Not so these days. Using Glyphs to find fractions will only work if the font you are using was designed with fractions in its set. If you’re using a wonky font you downloaded from the internet – and who hasn’t – you will still have to create a cute fraction yourself by making smaller numbers and adjusting your Baseline Shift, located in the character palate. And if you need 7/16 or 5/8? Too bad – you’re limited to ¼, ½ and ¾.

The Glyphs window also contains other wonderful little alternates you may search for in Illustrator sometimes, like:

¢   ¿  ˚  €   »  π   я  ©  ™  №  ◊

Often these are not on your keyboard, and though they may exist with a key command shortcut, who can remember that??

If you want to type fractions in Illustrator – check out this tutorial.

P.S. – How did I put those symbols in this post? Just copied and pasted them, real quick-like, from Illustrator.