Kanlaon

It is still Saturday afternoon.  It’s still two more hours till the start of the Big Game.  Fall afternoons can move so slowly.

But self is nothing if not committed to finding stuff to obsess over.  Right now, that happens to be word processing fonts.

Self thought it would be interesting to list all the ones she’s used in the past year.  She hates fancy, curlicued fonts, but she adores clean, spare ones, like Arial.  Or its close relation, Arial Narrow.

She also loves Arial Unicode MS.

She doesn’t like Ayuthaya.

If she’s writing a more conventional short story, she’ll choose an old-fashioned font like Baskerville.  Or Baskerville Old Face (Honestly, she can barely distinguish between these two)

Or Bell MT.  Or Big Caslon.

Big Caslon is possibly her favorite among all these “old-timey” fonts.

She also really likes Book Antiqua (In contrast, Bookman Old Style seems a little too — squat).  And Calisto MT.  And Cambria.  Or Century Schoolbook.  Or Constantia.

Calibri is for when self writes science fiction (Don’t ask why).

Candara is when she wants to project modernity 🙂

Century is a somewhat fatter “old-timey” font.

Cochin is beautiful.  A wee bit spider-y, but acceptable.

She’ll only use Century Gothic if she doesn’t care about postage.  But she finds its letters too fat.  Euphemia UCAS is way better.

She’ll never use Chalkboard either:  it projects playfulness, and she wants to be taken seriously for her writing.  She wants to appear like a very serious, very committed writer.

Colonna MT is faint, like scratches on stone.  Didot is better.

Corbel is perfect for her science fiction.

Courier is for when she wants to pretend she’s a reporter.

Footlight MT Light is way, waaay too ornate.

Franklin Gothic Book is, right now, one of her favorites.  As is Gill Sans.  Or Gill Sans MT.  Or Lucida Grande.  Or Lucida Sans.  Or Lucida Sans Unicode.  Or MS Reference Sans Serif.  Or News Gothic MT.  Or Thonburi.  Or Trebuchet MS.  Or Lucida Grande CE.  Or Hei.  Or Hiragino Sans GB.  These fonts are what self considers “flexible.”  OK for science fiction, domestic drama, experimental prose poetry, or traditional short story.  Maybe, even, for a novel.

Futura looks too unconventional.

Geneva looks a little babyish.

But Georgia is OK.

Helvetica is all-purpose but not, right now, one of her favorites.

InaiMathi doesn’t seem to make enough of a statement.

Lucida Bright is really big (but not as big or annoying as Century Gothic)

Lucida Fax is pretty good.

Menlo is also pretty big, but somehow she doesn’t find it as annoying as Century Gothic.

She likes Microsoft Sans Serif.  Very much.  She’ll try and use it more.

She’s on the fence about Modern No. 20.

Optima is swell.

Palatino is pretty but boring.  Like an above-average cheerleader.

Perpetua is tiny, tiny, tiny (Was there a saint named Perpetua, or is self in the throes of another hallucination?)

Plantagenet Cherokee is worth a story or two.  Or three.

Rockwell and Sathu are a little too declamatory.

Skia is fun.  If self were really Henning Mankell, she would use this font all the time.

Tahoma used to be a favorite.  Not anymore.  Don’t take it personally.

She will never use Times or Times New Roman unless she wants to die of boredom.  She can’t understand why so many journals specify, in their Writer’s Guidelines, that the submission should be in Times or Times New Roman.

Tw Cen MT is too soon to tell.

Verdana is a better, tighter version of Century Gothic.  She still sometimes uses it.  Would you believe, there were years when self rarely used anything else?

The worst font, the one she urges aspiring writers to never, ever use, is Zapfino.  It’s got so many fancy curlicues, it’s as if you’re trying to be George Washington.  And you can only squeeze in about a dozen words per page.

And Kai, though self can’t remember ever using it, is beautiful. Not only that, self loves the sound of the word Kai.

AppleMyungjo is very nice.

Self believes she’s used up almost an hour, just listing all these fonts.  Now, that’s resourcefulness.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.