Comments on: Fonts & Typography

By: Constance Ash

Constance Ash — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:44:51 +0000

Eileen Gunn, who is well known as writer, editor and critic in the SF and Feminist SF worlds, well, her partner, John Berry is a typefaceÂ historian and designer of digital fonts. You can find out more about him and his book here.

This is a subject of endless fascination and possibility.

Love, C.

By: Kevin Andrew Murphy

Kevin Andrew Murphy — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:43:09 +0000

Theodore,

Well, I generally follow the rule of two except when I’ve been specifically requested to use one by a publisher as that’s their house style. It’s a non-debate on the order of double versus single quotes and other items of US versus UK style. The one thing that’s always incorrect, however, is inconsistency in the same document, which monospace fonts do help you to catch. Likewise with typing two spaces between words, which I believe is incorrect everywhere but is still much harder to spot with proportional spacing, especially if someone decides to justify their margins, which looks pretty in a book but is ill suited for something designed to be edited and proofread.

By: Theodore Rosendorf

Theodore Rosendorf — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 15:38:29 +0000

Kevin,
When you say inexact typists, are you referring to one or two spaces after a period? Here’s a debate on the subject:
http://rosendorf.us/blogdorf/archive/2005/07/14/449.aspx

By: Kevin Andrew Murphy

Kevin Andrew Murphy — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:54:06 +0000

I will admit that, especially with computer typesetting, an advantage of Courier is that you can clearly see how many spaces you have after a period. A good thing with inexact typists especially.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:14:59 +0000

The added benefit for me of writing Infoquake in Palatino is that my publisher typeset the book in, I believe, Garamond. So the final product looked pretty similar to the drafts from a font standpoint.

Can’t blame your loathing for Courier, Madeleine. Does anyone actually like plain ol’ Courier? I always thought it was kind of like the SATs: a necessary evil.

By: Rhiannon Rose

Rhiannon Rose — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 07:33:27 +0000

Is there a version of Dark Courier for Macintosh computers?

I took typography recently, and now have a great love for fontfaces. I turned in a math project into class today, and I had spent more time spacing the font than working on the project itself.

By: Madeleine Robins

Madeleine Robins — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 06:15:59 +0000

My father designed several typefaces; I grew up with books of type around the house. I understand the lust for fonts.

For what it’s worth, David, I loathe Courier. I write in Palatino, then convert the document to Courier at the last possible moment. And that’s only for books, because Courier is still the preferred font for castoff calculation. But I don’t have to like it.

By: Kevin Andrew Murphy

Kevin Andrew Murphy — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 06:01:02 +0000

Well, Courier is all fine and good, but the question quickly becomes “Which Courier?” If I’m going to send something out, I generally use “Dark Courier,” which was a free download ages back from HP and is still available some spots, such as here. (Warning: Yes, this is an executable font file, made back in the age when no one was paranoid about trojans. However, since I placed it on the Larsen-Pomada agency site myself, I can vouchsafe for it.)

I know Madeleine is also fond of Palatino, though for readability, I’ll generally just have my work in Times New Roman unless I’m doing something fancier, in which case I tend to go for one of the old Venetian typefaces, such as Venetian BT, Centaur or Adobe Janson. Century Schoolbook is also nice for readability.

For submission purposes, I wouldn’t go with anything weirder than Courier for monospaced or Times New Roman for proportional. However, for setting a poem or a chapbook, I’ll play around and choose all sorts of fun font families.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 02:36:27 +0000

Cool stuff, Kevin. A writer making his own fonts is kind of like a baseball player making his own bat. I suspect most of us wish we could do it, but 99.85% of us would have no idea where to start (me included).

So I’m curious… as a font guru, what font(s) do you typically use when you write? I suppose it’s probably smart to just use a monospace font like Courier, but somehow I got stuck in the habit of using Palatino Linotype.