When you type your journaling or title, do you click on the page and start typing (called point or character type), or do you draw a text box first (known as area or paragraph type)? What’s the difference? In today’s short-and-sweet tutorial, we’ll look at how each method works, and when it might be best to choose one over the other.

Before we start, make sure your Type tool is selected. You can also press T on
your keyboard to select this tool. Both ways of adding text begin here.

Point Type

Point type is pretty straightforward – just click anywhere on your document and start typing. Your text will keep going on one line (even right off the edge of your page!) unless you manually hit Enter/Return to insert a line break. This is a good choice to add a single line of text on a journaling strip, date tag, or for a title.

You can, of course, type multiple lines with this method, but it’s awkward to get your text to line up correctly, and if changes need made later, you’ll need to work around all the manual line breaks. There is no way to automatically reflow point type if you decide you want a longer, narrower block of text, or a wider, shorter block, after it’s all typed out.

Area Type

To use area type, you need to first draw a text box. Start by choosing the Type tool, then click-and-drag your mouse to create a text box, similar to using the Rectangular Marquee tool. Once the box is created, you can start typing. Your text will automatically wrap around to the next line when it nears the edge of the box, no need to add manual line breaks.

One nifty thing about text boxes is that they can be resized. Grab one of the “handles” on the corners or sides, and drag until the box is resized to your liking. The text will automatically reflow to fit.

If, after resizing your text box, you run out of room for all the text, you’ll see an overflow symbol in the bottom right corner of the text box. Here’s a close-up (it looks like a plus sign inside a square):

Either adjust your text to fit within the box parameters, or resize until you can see everything. Area type is a good choice when you want your text to fit in a defined area, like a journaling card, or when you have more than a line or two of journaling. It’s easy to adjust your text area later, if you change the placement of your journaling on the page or decide you want to add or remove some journaling.