Thanks to all who  replied, seems like others have this problem as well.
The simplest solution is to go to Acrobat Reader 5.0 and choose Preferences,
Display and check on the smooth images and line art.  The text is now
smooth.  According to Stefan "The explanation is that ArcView exports the
fonts as type3-fonts(bitmap-fonts) with postscript. This leads to blocky
looking fonts in Acrobat".

Other solutions I received were to:
replace the type3-fonts with true-type fonts using Enfoucs PitStop-Plugin
for Acrobat ($$$$) < - did not want to fork out money

Use pdf-writer <- I do not have that on my machine so I did not try this.

Once you've got the .ps file, open Distiller and Job Options, make sure the
Embed All Fonts is On and Subsets at 100%. The only other thing is the fonts
in the Layout shouldn't have attributes like, Outline, Extended. Postscript
doesn't really support those characteristics. <- This did not work for me. I
have distiller 4.0 not sure if this made a difference.


Thanks again for your help!!!!
Linda

>  -----Original Message-----
> From:         Cerny, Linda
> Sent: Monday, November 05, 2001 10:34 AM
> To:   'arcview-l@esri.com'
> Subject:      ArcView 3.0: Using Post script and Acrobat Distiller
>
> Hello,
> I am printing to a .ps file from a layout, when I bring that ps file into
Acrobat Distiller the text  titles and labels are very blocky looking.  It
prints wonderfully, but the quality looks terrible on the screen.  Does
anyone have any idea of what I can do to fix this?  Will sum.
> Thanks
> Linda Cerny
> HPR
> Whitehouse NJ