Friday, May 25, 2007

The naked polliwog of the Elite g

A quite wonderful collection of writers' confessions as to their font preferences at Slate! Just go and read it, too good to excerpt, they have chosen their writers wisely.

(These are my people, this is my generation! I too remember the Brother word processor, I too like Anne Fadiman am unrepentantly anti-Helvetican, I share Caleb Crain's preference for a legible font with a neutral personality...)

(I love Courier, like various writers there [including my high-school classmate Elisa Zuritsky! Hi, Elisa!] I have a typewriter prehistory that makes Courier my favorite font, but since I am a fairly copious writer with a frugal streak I simply cannot afford the sheer number of pages that Courier makes me turn out--think of all the extra reams of paper I'd be lugging up to my apartment--so I do everything in Times New Roman. Its defaultishness suits my temperament, just--I suppose--as I prefer the basic default Blogger template also.)

(I had a striking insight the other day about my own temperament, but I must not procrastinate by writing it up now! But expect some thoughts over the weekend on the allure of triathlon...)

1 comment:

  1. See, I love Garamond, but I would never actually *compose* text in it. I would design things in it - I believe the CJLC body text was set in Garamond - but I always write in boring old Times New Roman, which actually has grown comforting to me over the years...Courier just seems too boxy for my tastes. Also, it takes up more space in a document, which gives you the unsettlingly premature feeling of having composed a great deal of material!

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