Friday, May 25, 2007

What do your words look like?

This is fun. Luminaries like Jonathan Lethem, Nicholson Baker, Andrew Vachss, Richard Posner and others chime in. Courier's the reigning favorite but a few interesting choices pop through. Dushko Petrovich's, for example:
My first job out of college was in the career-services office at Yale. It was oddly civilized in there: People smoked, we had very nice carpets, and the dean looked out for everyone. So much so that one day she sat behind her beautiful desk and personally revised my résumé for me. The first thing she did was change the font. "Which one's that?" I asked. "Palatino," she said. And then, after drawing in the cigarette: "You can change it if you don't like it."Out of admiration, out of superstition, out of habit, in chivalrous devotion, on too many computers (for how many thousands of words?), on three continents, at all hours of the day and in every single human mood, I have remained completely loyal to this font. Fourteen point, to be precise.
I'm a Book Antiqua boy, myself.

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