Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Contrefonts

7 comments:

  1. Ain't it the truth? I know a professor who uses Papyrus on all hir documents, and it's seriously annoying.

    So I've taken to telling my students that on their papers, not only do I want 1 inch margins all around, I want Times New Roman (go Julius!) 12pt. Otherwise? I get courier or something equally ugly in a 14-16pt with 1/5" margins for a two page paper...

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  2. Archaeologists love to use Papyrus in PowerPoints. While the choice of font can contribute considerably to the style of a presentation, when it is a bit too close to home, it comes off as cheese. Pure cheese.

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  3. Do you ever wonder why ye Olde English font is even included with your computer? Come on. It really only has two uses. 1) Fliers for Renaissance fairs; 2) Parody olde tyme news stories. Other than, it's useless. I seriously doubt that enough people are doing either thing to put it on every computer on the planet. What up Microsoft?

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  4. I actually want my students to learn that it is okay to use other professional fonts besides whatever is default in Word, so I assign by word count instead of page length, never specify TNR, and try to give them handouts in a variety of professional fonts. Over several years, this subliminal prodding has been a total failure and I have read hundreds of essays in 12pt TNR.

    Also, I *was* sorta this student--I totally did a lot of titles and title pages in decorative "appropriate" fonts like this (but never the main essay), and still do on my syllabus. In fact, my "world to 1500" uses Olde English (well, okay, Lucida Blackletter, which is somewhat more legible. My Mac does not have Olde English). Although I should find an "old Islam style" font for "world to 1500" instead of the Eurocentric medieval font.

    (PS. This word verification doesn't work in my RSS reader/browser)

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  5. Really, Papyrus comes off as cheese? I like to use it for headings once in awhile (though NEVER would want to read an entire document in that font).

    So when I thought people were all excited about that presentation and high-fiving the awesome points therein, they were *really* whispering to each other: Look...she is so cheesy. Aw, dang it.

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  6. I would like to submit this tag! as a complete non-sequitor.

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