Sometimes I like the big picture look: lots of lines on the screen, little type.
Sometimes bigger type, fewer lines on the screen.
For me, it seems like change more than rigid guidelines.
How do you all do it?
For writing from scratch, any configuration in any program will do.
LV
13 point Optima in Scrivener and most things … 11 point Caslon Pro in Nisus Writer Pro from where I print to PDF, but if I have to exchange documents with a Windows user, I put it in 12 point Times New Roman.
It would be hard for you to imagine the scramble that documents written by Chinese colleagues on Windows PCs appear in, but they’re largely in an unknown font that NWP substitutes ST Song for … and they have a preference for 10.5 point, though they’ll include paragraphs in 12 point and periodically 13 point.
Mark
13 point Optima in Scrivener and most things … 11 point Caslon Pro in Nisus Writer Pro from where I print to PDF, but if I have to exchange documents with a Windows user, I put it in 12 point Times New Roman.
It would be hard for you to imagine the scramble that documents written by Chinese colleagues on Windows PCs appear in, but they’re largely in an unknown font that NWP substitutes ST Song for … and they have a preference for 10.5 point, though they’ll include paragraphs in 12 point and periodically 13 point.
Mark
Optima 13, Monaco 14 for fixed width, in just about everything.
ps
Two things I really like about Scrivener in this regard:
The sense of freedom I have to format my writing space to suit my writing in the clear knowledge that this is can be done entirely independently of the format of my compiled typescript.
Scrivener gives me two built-in regimes for writing that can have their own settings—the Editor pane and Full Screen. I use these differently, and I find it utterly natural to use different font scales for the two spaces.
I do most of my work on a 12" laptop screen, and I like sizeable, easy to see text, because it “frees me from the screen”, i.e. reduces eye fatigue and unglues your face from the monitor, restoring head and body mobility while you work.
My currently preferred typeface is Courier (yes, back to Courier. feels like coming home). I have is set to 18 pts by default, but I use the “scale %” pop-ups to scale adjust this. In the Editor, I use 100% and 125%, depending on what I am doing. In Full Screen, I am always just gang-out writing (or reading–though I often pull things up into Tofu for real reading to eliminate the annoyance of vertical scroll), so I keep full screen set to sumptuous 150%.
May seem big to you, but you should try it. I think people don’t realize how much time they spend looking at tiny type on their computer and don’t realize how much focussing on tiny type on a monitor over a period of time immobilizes you and taxes your eyes.
Sometimes you absolutely need to see more of your text in a window, but often not. Scrivener works pretty ideally for me in navigating between these two opposite-going needs.
UPDATE (Aug 2010): While the principles remain, my practice has changed. I have decided it gives me more flexibility to keep the default text set to 12 pt Courier and do all the scaling with magnification. In this case, 175% in the Editor and 200% for Full Screen. The net result on screen is the same, BUT I there is a boon to doing it this way. The chief advantage of going this route is that I can make quick printouts with Scriv’s Print function (as opposed to Compile) of a document or documents (via Edit Scrivenings) and these then come out in a clean, “manuscriptish” 12pt Courier without any fuss. (I know the Print function can be set via Page Setup to use the current compile settings, but for my quick-and-dirty drafty printouts it is for some reason better for them not to have that finished look.)
So, the bottom line now is: a) set Editor font size according to desired size of quick-and-dirty Print printouts, then b) use magnification in Editor and Full Screen to achieve sumptuous, kick-back font size on screen. For me, that is i) 12pt Courier with ii) 175% and 200% mag, respectively.
Before I read this thread: Monaco, 13 point on both Textmate, where I do most of my writing for the Internet, which is to say most of my writing, and in Scrivener.
But then I started thinking about options, and settled on good ol’ Helvetica for Scrivener, boosting up the font size to 18 for readability, and Anandale Mono in Textmate.
I don’t know a lot about fonts and typography, but I’m enough of a font geek to have laughed out loud when watching a documentary about something that happened in the early 80s, and I saw a storefront sign written in a font like this:
linotype.com/catalog/fontsam … &id=115337
Mitch Wagner
For scripts: 12pt courier, at 125% zoom.
For prose: 16pt Georgia (with 1.5x line spacing) at 100% zoom.
I agree, one of Scriv’s greatest strengths is the ability to separate the drafting and exporting fonts/styles.
I use 12-point Chalkboard, I guess just because it’s comfortable. When I insert blocks of text I usually go to Times New Roman for contrast.
Joe
Since I chimed in on this in Nov 2008, my practice has changed in a key respect (updated in the original post above and duplicated here):
While the principles (articulated in my original post) remain, my practice has changed. I have decided it gives me more flexibility to keep the default text set to 12 pt (Courier) and do all the scaling with magnification. In this case, 175% in the Editor and 200% for Full Screen. The net result on screen is the same, BUT there is a boon to doing it this way. The chief advantage of going this route is that I can make quick printouts with Scriv’s Print function (as opposed to Compile) of a document or documents (via Edit Scrivenings) and these then come out in a clean, “typescriptish” 12pt Courier without any fuss. (The Print function can be set via Page Setup to use the current compile settings, but for my quick-and-dirty drafty printouts it is for some reason better for them not to have that finished look.)
So, the bottom line now is: a) set Editor font size according to desired size of quick-and-dirty Print printouts, then b) use magnification in Editor and Full Screen to achieve sumptuous, kick-back font size on screen. For me, that is i) a default of 12pt Courier with ii) 175% and 200% mag, respectively.
As you will recognize this points to a yet further loveliness of Scrivener: There are actually four distinct textual regimes over which we have just-right adjustment controls: Editor view, Full Screen view, Print, and Compile. Each of these regimes has its own wants and satisfactions, and Scrivener allows one to establish the best look for each.
This was what I ended up settling on too: use the zoom function instead of resizing the fonts. A further advantage, when using a fixed width font, is that it retains the ratio between tab stops and characters, and so preserves alignment.