Essay fonts and the demolition of Times New Roman
General | April 8, 2010
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realize this, but I’ve recently concluded that the dullness and ugliness of Times New Roman tarnish my poor, innocent, undeserving eyes. Up until now, I’d used it for essays because my middle and high school teachers expected it, but now, with more flexible college professors, I’ve gotten the urge to experiment with essay fonts.
Now, you might be thinking that I’m just foolishly putting my GPA in jeopardy, but no worries, the essays I’ve written in Cambria have done just as well as or better than my essays in traditional Times New Roman. And when I get picky professors who swear by that grotesque, outdated font, well, I’m certainly not going to disregard their guidelines. Plus, I swear I’ll never write anything in Trebuchet like this dude did.
Perhaps Cambria works just as well because it’s the new default in Word, so plenty of people are using it and Calibri these days, and perhaps I shouldn’t try any font that’s too outlandish (essays in Webdings? I’m sure that would go over well…), but Cambria, although better than TNR, is too…blocky.
So, (very) recently, I’ve begun writing my essays in Minion Pro. It’s just so lovely and clean and sophisticated, and it reminds me of well-designed books. For example, The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath is set in Minion, and it’s a phenomenal textbook in both design and content. Books with TNR as a typeface strike me as unprofessional and make me go awerkawerklaewrkl (I don’t know what that is, exactly, but I imagine it closely approximates the death of a body part). I’m actually writing my first essay in Minion right now, so, I mean, I haven’t received any feedback, but I’ll let you know if I get my first F on a paper or something like that.
I think we should all do away with Times New Roman. About 75% (this is a very scientific statistic; I didn’t just make it up or anything…) of all other serif fonts are better-looking and more legible.
What fonts do you like most for essays or for print in general?
I like sans-serif for both essays and print in general. Too many times I’ve found spelling mistakes in books where serif has been used and you can see it’s because letters look too much the same. I use Arial and Verdana, Tahoma sometimes.
I still use Office XP where TNR is the default. For uni work I don’t generally change it from TNR, either. Funny you should mention this now, though, because just recently I was looking to see whether I had any other nice serif fonts installed so I can make a switch. Maybe I’ll give Minion a test drive!
Well, it’s a requirement to use some sort of serif font when writing essays or pro-pieces, and I have no problem adhering to that if doing otherwise is going to jeopardize my grades or my chances of getting published. I don’t have a preference when it comes to that because I don’t see the point in having one when the decision isn’t up to me. Writing an essay in impact would be bad-ass, though.
In general, I like courier new as a serif font because of how well-rounded it is. I don’t really like that many sans-serif fonts, personally. They’re great on a computer, but annoying to me otherwise.
I usually use Calibri because it’s the default.
When I decide to change it, I write in Adobe Garamond Pro. I’m not a huge font snob, though. No Wingdings, no Comic Sans, no Trebuchet, no Courier New… but, you know, the only reason I use Adobe Garamond Pro is because it’s the first decent-looking serif font on the list. 
I absolutely refuse to use Times New Roman for my essays because it hurts my eyes as well. I usually use Calibri because it’s simple and sleek.
It’s also my default on Word so I don’t have to change it at all. For essays, I prefer to use sans serif fonts.
…
I like TNR
I didn’t until a few years ago when I started using it a bunch in my workplace, and it grew on me. …
I’ve had professors that required Times New Roman for essays so I set it as my default in Word and left it at that
i agree! TNR just kills my mood for writing. When an essay calls for strict adherance to standards, what I usually do is write the whole thing out in Calibri or Arial first, then when I’m done, change everything to TNR size 12 (UGLY!!!), double-spacing, justified alignment. Bah.