Sunday, June 28, 2015

WELCOME TO MY FONTFAIL

     Courier New, anyone?  Is there something tragically wrong with Courier New that no one ever bothered me to tell me about?  I'm assuming, of course, that you're more font-forward than I am, because let's face it - who isn't?  Courier New is the default font I use at work.  To me, it's so mild-mannered and inoffensive as to be invisible.  I mean, it's not like it features little clowns acting out the letters, is what I'm saying.  It's BLAND.
      And yet, when I met with an agent for a critique at the NJSCBWI conference I attended two weeks ago, she started off the conversation by telling me, in a seriously aggrieved tone, that I had (Crime #1) sent her my submission in her least favorite font.   And if that weren't enough, when she tried to change the font to something more tolerable, everything went "all wonky" because (Crime #2) I had done such a terrible job of formatting.  I got the strong impression that, had my crime spree ended with the use of Courier New, she might have courageously gritted her teeth and sailed onward, difficult as it would have been.  But by following it up with Crime #2, I had truly drilled the last nail into my own coffin.  Oh, the agent also really did not like my manuscript, by the way, but her response to that seemed so much less visceral; she was not remotely interested in the content, but neither was she personally offended.
     It's taken me a while to figure out what was going on here, but I've got it now: I was being told that I had demonstrated an appalling lack of taste and judgment by utilizing what I should have known was a clearly inferior font in a submission to a clearly superior person.  Or - perhaps even worse - that I knew full well how nightmarish Courier New was, but I simply didn't care.  I was utterly indiscriminate (cf. "That's my last duchess painted on the wall").  In short, I was a fontslut.
     I realized only today that I had been font shamed, and I was going to post about it when it occurred to me that I might actually not be the first person to come up with that phrase.  Enter Google.  I now know that font shaming is a concept that has existed for the Internet equivalent of millennia, i.e., at least two years.  If you don't believe me, read this and this and this, and then join me in my hatred of people everywhere who will stop at nothing to let you know how much better they are than you.


                                         Look!!  It's Little Lord FONTleroy!!!  hahahahahahaha

     So.  Have YOU ever been font shamed?  Please let me know.  If there are enough of us, maybe we can form a support group!

UPDATE: Today I Googled "font snobbery," and what an education I've gotten!  Thank God I didn't send my submission in Comic Sans; if I had, my picture might be up in print shops all around the country under a "MOST WANTED" caption.  But I didn't see one mention of Courier New among the lists of Most Reviled Fonts.  And besides, the people who seem most offended by certain fonts seem to be mostly graphic designers, who I suppose have a right to care about things like that.  But the rest of us?  Please.  Get a life.

8 comments:

  1. So sorry that this affected your one-on-one experience. :( But leave it to you to turn it into a witty post. Font-shamed, indeed.

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    1. Oh, it was only one 15-minute experience in my life. I think I'll survive. But thank you for your condolences!!

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  2. People just love having something to feel smug about, don't they? There are many, many, MANY more problematic font choices you could have made--including Comic Sans. I'm not quite sure why Courier New would be anybody's "least favorite font," not when you consider the competition.

    Let's hope the next agent is a little less font-specific. :)

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    1. Thank you, Kern! Just by employing the phrase "problematic font choices," you make it clear how much more font-forward you are than me! You're not by any chance a graphic designer, are you?

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  3. fonts, schmontz - you can't please everyone and that person obviously is impossible to please so you don't want them anyway! i personally dislike calibri because it's the Office default font and i like to choose my own! but i think you can't go wrong with garamond =)

    happy font finding!

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    1. Tara: thanks for your support! I just checked out Garamond, which I'd never heard of (I TOLD you everyone is more font-forward than me!), and I agree with you that it's both simple and elegant. Thank you so much for the tip! Maybe it's actually time to start trying to haul myself out of the Dark Ages of Typeface....

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  4. Other agents and editors have mentioned that they don't care much about font selection--only that it be a readable font (not overly ornate) and that text be double-spaced. So perhaps you got an agent who is really a graphic artist in disguise? Current thinking appears to be that Times Roman (or another serif font) is the preferred font. Is that what you found in your "font research"?

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  5. Ellen, thank you for visiting! I have to confess that my "font research" hasn't exactly happened yet, and that your phrase "another serif font" leaves me mystified. But I've heard of Times Roman! That's gotta count for something, right? (Just shoot me.)

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