Fonts again
Published by Deanna Hoak February 26th, 2007 in blog, copyeditingSo I have a long post planned on why, again, I so much prefer manuscripts to be set in Courier New rather than in Times Roman. I’ll make it as soon as I can do so without ranting, which might yet be a while.
However, let’s start here: In which of these do you think it’s easier to see that the punctuation is a semicolon?
number;
or
number;
Really, I shouldn’t have to note any more than that, though I’m sure I will.
7 Responses to “Fonts again”
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
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In which of these do you think it’s easier to see that the punctuation is a semicolon?
number;
or
number;
I admit that, having spent most of today writing Perl, I assume anything at the end of a line is a semicolon. This does not detract from the validity of your point. ;)
That’s so interesting, because I find Courier practically impossible to read for any length of time.
Then again, I do all my copy-editing onscreen, and in 14-point type. I think I would be a very, very bad hard-copy copy editor.
*peers* Looks like Geneva to me, actually. Which… rather makes your point that Times Roman isn’t a terribly convenient font at times, I’d say.
I prefer Courier to Courier New. It’s bolder on screen and the spacing/line count doesn’t change between the two.
That’s manuscript fonts, though, and my brain switches gears when I’m reading a book.
Not sure how it will reconcile galleys.
I like Courier, too, but Courier New comes standard with Word and hence more people are likely to use it.
Courier Definately!
I usually work in Courier New just because it’s easier to read. Some Dyslexic’s that I know swear by Arial, as the most friendly font for reading.
It used to be you could tell windows to show you system fonts. The family programmer used to have everything set to one of those after spending 8 hours debugging only to find the problem was an o instead of Zero.
The more mistakes the copy editor and typesetter make, the better I look when I’m proofreading and find them. Bring on the hard-to-read fonts!!! :-)