What font do you use?

Scrivener
1

As per title, which font do you guys use the most (when you let your thoughts out)?

Recently I had to spend more and more of my time switching between MacOS>Windows>MacOS>iOS>Windows. The font between platforms is not supported well. As such, I have to stick most of the times only with Arial - as that’s the only one which won’t break any text formatting/layout too much :neutral_face:

What about you guys, what do you use the most?

2

I make extensive use of fonts I’ve downloaded from https://fontsquirrel.com. They have many fonts that are free for commercial use. I install them on my Mac and use the Anyfont app (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/anyfont/id821560738?mt=8) to install them on my iOS devices.

Currently I use Anonymous Pro as my writing font, and Cormorant as my output font. But that varies depending on my needs. I change writing fonts regularly to keep the text looking fresh to my eyes. Output font varies depending on the audience for my work. (Professional editors get the font they request; different genres of self-published work get different fonts.)

I assume you’ve read the L&L Knowledge base article on cross-platform fonts, but for readers who might not have done, it’s at https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/ios/using-fonts-across-platforms.

3

I’ve always been a monospace fan, and a Windows user, and I love Courier…but not Courier New (ugly, thin, anorexic font). I use Courier Prime whenever I can. It was originally developed for John August, a screenwriter, and a Mac user as well, so I’m sure it moves between Windows and Mac just fine (I know it works well in Linux).

If I have to use a san serif font, I usually default to Arial, all the while wishing I could afford to buy Helvetica.

4

Fonts are not a big thing for me – except that I have an intense dislike of Helvetica as a screen font. It irritates me no end that it seems to be the default everywhere I go. I used to use Verdana all the time, and I now use IBM Plex Mono on screen. They are about the only two fonts I’ve used in more than ten years, apart from the occasional experiment to see if I like another one better. Anything I print (which happens rather rarely) is in Times New Roman.

5

Onscreen I tend to prefer IBM Plex Mono, Hack, or Lucida Grande.

6

My current BFF font is Courier New, but there’s no accounting for taste. :smiley: When I tire of it, which I know I will, to switch things up I’ll likely move to Courier Prime or Courier Screenplay.

I was using Gabriele, my favorite typewriter font, but it doesn’t play well with the Win beta. :frowning:

Best,
Jim

7

I wish I loved Courier New…it’s built in to Windows. But I find it, as SF writer Robert Sawyer says, “anemic.”

8

For anyone who likes monospaced fonts, this online tool is great for comparing free fonts easily:

app.programmingfonts.org/

Paste in some text, change fontsize and line height to taste, turn off syntax highlighting, pin fonts you are interested in then switch back and forth easily…

9

thanks for the recommendation on Courier Prime. I switched and it looks great!

10

I’ve always liked Merriweather for the editor font. Comments I typically leave at Lucida Sans or Verdana. Found Merriweather on a website years ago and fell in love with it. It’s easy on the eyes, big enough to read, and has a sort of feel-good vibe without being too fancy.

Palatino is another good one. I used to use this font exclusively when I worked for a local newspaper.

11

Eric, Merriweather looks like a good one, as does that guitar. :slight_smile:

12

I use Bookman Old Style for a number of reasons:

  1. It is free, no royalties. Fairly generic (all versions I’ve seen are pretty much exactly the same).
  2. It is a serifed font. Serifed fonts are much easier to read over long docs than sans serif. This one reads well.
  3. Fiction is typically published in a font similar to this one, so it reads in the editor similar to how it reads to a reader.
  4. It does not draw attention to itself. It’s invisible.
  5. Neither Mac nor Windows has any vendetta against this font.
  6. It is similar to a font that Kindle will choose.
  7. It has no real faults and no real downside (many fonts do).
13

I use Times New Roman… in black and size 12 points.
As a typeface designed for newspaper printing, Times New Roman has a high x-height, short descenders to allow tight linespacing and a relatively condensed appearance. The new design made its debut in The Times on 3 October 1932. After one year, the design was released for commercial sale.
Other serif fonts (with tails) to consider that are easy to read include: Georgie, Bell MT, Goudy Old Style, Garamond.

14

Another reason I use BooKman Old Style? The en dashes and em dashes seem to be a reasonable length. Many fonts have them in weird lengths. IMHO, it is important for the reader to perceive when an en dash or em dash is used, be able to clearly tell them apart, and it’s also important for them to not look weird, length-wise.

15

I like font from the period connected to Bauhaus. I have been in my property in Berlin and was on exhibition due to 100 years of Bauhaus. I fell in love with this style.

16

I like a monospaced font and have used one since I first started using Scrivener.

A monospaced font looks like old-fashioned typewriting and reminds me that I am writing and editing the text and should not be concerning myself with layout. I found this very useful to keep in mind when I first got to grips with Scrivener, and it has become a pleasant habit now.

Thanks to a post by Silverdragon I am now using Source Code Pro in 12pt on both Windows (the beta) and iOS (an iPad Air 2). Projects switch smoothly between devices, display properly, and Source Code Pro is the nicest cross-platform font of its type that I have found.

17

One of the most wonderful things about Scrivener is that it is not WYSIWYG! So there’s a clear distinction between writing font (what I see in the editor) and reading font (what my readers see.)

My choice for writing font is any of several monospaced fonts that make typos painfully obvious. I stare all day at Fantasque Sans Mono or Ubuntu Mono or Source Code Pro, No confused lowercase ells/uppercase eyes/numeral ones or wrong-way curly quotes for me! Missing or doubled spaces are likewise easy to spot.

My beta readers get their choice of Courier Prime or Times New Roman; my editor gets, of course, whatever font she asks for. (She asks for Times New Roman. She obviously saves her imagination for her suggestions. :wink: )

As for my paying customers, most of my readers get whatever font they choose in their e-reader or app. In print, my historical fantasy readers get Cormorant, a readable but old-fashioned looking font; my science fiction readers get Alegreya, also readable but timeless in its look.

(@OwenKelly, I’m so glad my suggestions have been of use to you!)

18

My goto used to be Chinacat, but now I almost exclusively use SF Cartoonist Hand. White text on a black background because I’m a night owl and black-on-white will burn my eyes :laughing:

I just really, really like the look and aesthetic of handwritten fonts that aren’t cursive. Screw all those straight-and-narrow boring fonts :unamused:

(I also may not have a problem with obsessively downloading every handwritten font that I even remotely like lmao-)

19

Tried the cartoonist hand style fonts, but they don’t float my boat… OTOH, I totally relate to your compulsive font downloading habit. I have monospaced fonts installed on my system that I would blush to post here… Space Mono, anyone? (and no, I don’t recommend it.) :smiley:

20

Yes. It’s a clear distinction between what the author and reader see.

No offense, but that makes zero sense to me. I don’t see that as ‘wonderful’, not even a little bit. I see it as part of a larger gigantic problem. Those who don’t understand this are part of the problem, and not part of the solution.

The biggest obstacle writers face is the difference between their own subjective author view and the reader objective view. The entire purpose of writing is to communicate. To allow your thoughts to be parsed from a POV in the reader (which is not the same POV of the author) as the same thought. To have a thought, then share that thought, and have it understood, and not misinterpreted.

There are tons of obstacles regarding that happening the way we wish, the largest being that difference between the subjective and the objective.

Having your thought appear on the page differently for the reader than the way it appears on the page to you, is simply one more obstacle to communication. One more level of abstraction that we force the reader to machete their way through on their journey to understand our thought the way we expect them to. It’s a barrier to full communication that does not need to be there.

To think about font as ‘what I like to see as the author’, ignores this problem entirely. What we write is not (hopefully) written to assuage our own egos or ‘what we like to see’ as the font. It is not about us. The written word belongs to the reader, and not to the author. Those who don’t see this basic concept are woefully misguided.

IOW, pick a font that communicates the thought to the reader in the best manner. Pick the font best for the reader, then edit using that font, primarily. That will bring the subjective POV and objective POV closer to each other. And that is the primary goal of all writing.

Then, read your own work on Kindle or iBooks in a different font if you like, which can sometimes reveal even more about the reader objective POV to you, and allow you to fix problems you might not have otherwise seen,