“If you meet in person, tone of voice, clothes and body language carry a huge amount of information. “The font you use is a form of non-verbal communication,” she said. Graphic designer Sarah Hyndman, author of Why Fonts Matter, agrees. “The reaction to the tweet is fascinating because it goes beyond personal preference and into questions of identity, accessibility, place, accent and style.” “Since we spend so much time with fonts, it’s unsurprising they provoke such strong emotions,” he said. I don’t know why I live this way.”įor Richardson, fonts are “always worth fighting over”. “But with postcards of great lettering and design and art and landscapes on my wall to periodically cleanse my eyes and soul. Stone cold auto Calibri 11,” says Porter, author of Grief Is the Thing With Feathers. The bestselling novelist Max Porter also eschews serifs. The Calibri crowd were slow to defend their sans-serif selection – perhaps wary after fantasy author Katie Khan’s attack on last year: “Let’s talk about fonts baby / Let’s talk about Century / Let’s talk about all the good fonts And the bad fonts / (Calibri) / Let’s TALK about fonts.”īut Richardson, whose exploration of what it means to be queer and religious, Unorthodox, was published last year, admits he is a “Calibri 11 person” himself, although “if I’m writing creatively I’m a Garamond 11.” Marian Keyes is also a default Times New Roman 12pt user, but like Jones, she uses different fonts in the same typescript – for flashbacks, WhatsApps and other media. But now she has switched to Times because the formatting kept going wrong – although at the moment she is “alternating between Cambria and Arial, because they suit the characters I’m writing”. “I used to use Courier, because of its typewriter feel, it was the most tactile, and I identified with it,” she says.
The Costa-winning novelist Sadie Jones uses Times New Roman as well. Ian Rankin told the Guardian he’s a Times New Roman man as well – although his reasons are a little more low key: “Because it’s the first one that comes up … and it is easy on the eye.” For Star Wars author Chuck Wendig, it’s “14pt Times New Roman, which is the best answer and you all know it”. “Times New Roman, size 12 font, 1.5 spacing, like a human being,” agreed author Nicole Mello. “Surely anyone who doesn’t do Times New Roman 12 pt is a monster?” asked fantasy novelist Rebecca F Kuang. For the Canadian fantasy novelist Guy Gavriel Kay it’s “New Century Schoolbook 12 … because I am young and cool”.īut then the surge for Times New Roman began. For Hugo-winning American science fiction author John Scalzi, it’s Georgia, 12-point, single-spaced, and “when I’m done, I double-space the entire document and put it into Courier, again 12pt”. Arial 12 pt, replied Poirot novelist and bestselling crime author Sophie Hannah.