Palatino superscript doesn't work right

Glad to have found this thread as I've just upgraded to Mavericks from Lion. Of interest Palatino Linotype has much larger line spacing which is no good for me in the long annual document I produce. I have found Lucida Bright one point lower is very similar and is OK. I am loath to/ haven't time to muck about with altering font book settings. Thx to others for the info tho'.

If you want to keep the same spacing, then just extract Palatino from your Mountain Lion backup or installer.

As of 10.9.3, the Mavericks version still has not been fixed.

More info.

I don't recall the Mountain Lion version of Palatino having problems when I was testing before, but under 10.9.4, it's acting very goofy. The Bold Italic version wouldn't show in Word 2011 or InDesign CC 2014. Suitcase shows the typeface and says it's active, but it wouldn't appear. I closed Word and deactivated the font. I then reactivated the ML version of Palatino and launched Word 2011. Then all four typefaces appeared in Word. However, under InDesign CC 2014 and TextEdit, the Regular face will not show up for anything. Nor with the Mavericks or Lion versions.

To tell the truth, I now think none of the OS X supplied versions of Palatino work as they should. I can switch between the Linotype version supplied with Office 2011, Adobe's Type 1 PostScript, Adobe's OpenType PostScript, and even the ancient OS 9 versions over and over, and they always work as expected.

Assuming you have a copy of Palatino in your Library > Fonts folder, a simple place to start is to go to System > Library > Fonts and remove Palatino.ttc. If desired, you can create a separate folder in the System > Library called "Fonts (Removed)" and just drop it in there, then close/reopen MS Word and see if the superscripts/subscripts work correctly. This worked for me!

Unfortunately, although MS Word will now display Palatino correctly (including superscripts and subscripts), it's now no longer an option I can select in the Fonts menu - even though I copied the Palatino fonts folder from Library > Fonts over to System > Library > Fonts.

Any thoughts on how I can correct this issue?

even though I copied the Palatino fonts folder from Library > Fonts over to System > Library > Fonts.

It doesn't work because you created a font conflict by having the same font active in two different places. You need to fully remove one or the other.

Moving, or copying a font to a different folder also has no bearing on whether or not it works. Something is wrong with the OS X supplied version of Palatino.

In my last test, as stated above, all I did was deactivate the font, then reactivate it, and Word suddenly saw all four typefaces. Other apps such as InDesign and TextEdit could not see all of the typefaces no matter what I did. And that was with any OS X supplied version of Palatino from Lion, Mountain Lion, or Mavericks.

If you have MS Office installed, I would recommend completely removing the OS X supplied version of Palatino and use the MS Office supplied Linotype version of Palatino.

I just ran into this problem and took your advice, but I replaced the Yosemite/Mavericks Palatino with one retrieved from Time Machine. I just found the font in /System/Library/Fonts and restored from the first Time Machine backup older than the .ttc file, then activated using Font Book.

Any idea which one that is? I just now tried the Mavericks and Yosemite supplied versions of Palatino in Word 2011 in Yosemite. At point sizes of 14 or under, superscript still doesn't work right. The version of Palatino supplied with Office works.

I'm afraid I'm slow. Would you, please, give very explicit directions on how to remove a font and then install a replacement? I've been having trouble with Palatino and only just now found your post.

Thanks!

Hi SpruceFan,

First a little info for everyone. The OS X supplied version of Palatino still does not work. Not even the one supplied with El Capitan. This is how a Type 1 PostScript font converted to OpenType PostScript appears at 12 point text:

Now the supplied OS X version at 12 point (obviously wrong):

As per the ongoing issue, above 12 points, superscript/subscript for the OS X supplied version then works correctly. Here at 20 points:

Really bad news for anyone using Office 2016. It no longer recognizes older Mac legacy TrueType fonts, or Type 1 PostScript fonts. They'll show up in your list of fonts if activated, but it will not use them. Instead, the 2016 apps will substitute Arial every time. Office 2016 will only accept TrueType OpenType, or PostScript OpenType fonts.

Back to the question. It depends on what version of OS X you're using how you have to go about removing the OS X supplied version of Palatino.

1) For Mavericks and Yosemite, Palatino is in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. In Mountain Lion, Lion and Snow Leopard, this font is in the root /Library/Fonts/ folder. Highlight the Palatino fonts and delete it. You'll have to provide your admin password to complete the action. You can't empty the trash until you restart.

2) For El Capitan, you either have to startup to another bootable drive and then delete Palatino from the non startup disk El Capitan is on, or temporarily disable System Integrity Protection. Once SIP is disabled, the same instructions as above in step 1 can be followed. Make sure you delete the font before turning SIP back on.

3) Put your third party version of Palatino into the root /Library/Fonts/ folder so all user accounts of that Mac have access to it.

There are other work-arounds that don't involve complicated font deletions. One workaround is to use Palatino Linotype (as opposed to plain Palatino that Apple provides.) The downside is that Palatino Linotype sometimes prints funny.

The other workaround that I used in my 400-page book with huge numbers of endnotes is to use a different font. In my case, I used 10-point Bookman, which is the equivalent of an 11-point Palatino. Bookman is probably the most readable serifed font because of its high x-heights, wide characters, and thick serifs.

Thanks! I disabled SIP, deleted palatino, enabled SIP and then loaded the font from a machine I have still running Leopard. The problem was solved. I did this on two machines, one running Word for Mac 2011 and one running Word for Mac 2016. I'm very grateful, indeed: endnote references were nearly impossible to read.

You're welcome. tester1781's advice is also valid. No need to remove the nonfunctioning font since the Linotype version doesn't conflict with it. The only problem there is making sure you always use the correct one. I'd prefer the bad font not even be available to choose.

I hadn’t noticed this bug before (I don’t use superscript that much, or Word for that matter), but I definitely didn’t remember having any trouble with Palatino in InDesign, so I did a little more testing of my own on Word and InDesign, plus a couple other word processors. Here's the setup:

OS X 10.10.5

InDesign CS5

Mellel 3.4.4

NeoOffice 2015.3 Classic

TextEdit 1.10

Word 2008

And here’s what I found:

Palatino 9.0d1e1 (Yosemite version)

Superscript displayed incorrectly in Word at sizes below 16 points. It displayed normally in InDesign, Mellel, NeoOffice, and TextEdit.

Palatino 7.0d4e6 (Mountain Lion version)

Superscript displayed fine in all five programs.

I also tested a couple versions of Book Antiqua, may Zapf have mercy on my soul :-)

Book Antiqua 9.0d5e2 (from Yosemite’s iWork folder)

Wouldn’t show up for me at all in Word’s font menus, but worked fine (including superscript) in the other four programs.

Book Antiqua 2.35 (from Office 2008, which doesn’t include Palatino LT)

Worked fine (including superscript) in all five programs.

So on my system, at least, it's looking like the problem lies at least as much with MS Office as with the font file.

Yes, I see the same. I tested the Yosemite and El Capitan versions of Palatino with quite a few apps. Superscript works as expected at all points sizes under:

Photoshop CC

Illustrator CC

InDesign CC

Quark XPress 2015

PowerPoint 2016

Heck, even somewhat correctly in TextEdit

Word (2016 in current testing, but also in 2011) does not work. Anything under 16 points with the OS X supplied version of Palatino does not work correctly when superscript is applied. And it seems to be just this one font. I tried about 30 other randomly selected OS X fonts, and they all worked as expected. Why is it just this one app that doesn't like OS X's Palatino font?