Somewhere I heard that Georgia was an ideal screen font because of the bigger x-height, et cetera, so I tried it out alongside all of the other classy serif fonts, and (lo and behold!) I liked it better than the rest, even good old boring Times New Roman. It wasn’t too old-fashioned or elegant, and it just seemed nice and open and readable.
Of course at the usual 12 points it’s comically large, but that’s a small price to pay for a nice, non-awkward font that doesn’t seem torn from the pages of Serious Literature.
(You know, the editions on nice paper that come with A Note on the Typeface? Not aiming for that.)
But for assignments etc. usually use Calibri… mainly because it was the default when I got Word 2007 … and also I find it just slightly more aesthetically pleasing than Arial.
Times used to irritate the heck out of me, to the point where I’d ctrl-a and change the font on anything I had to read. These days, it doesn’t seem to bother me as much…
I hate reading anything serif on a computer screen. I like the Vista / Office 2007 suite of fonts a lot, these days. (Calibri, Cabria, Consolas, etc.) Calibri has subtle roundness which I find more appealing than the sharper edged Arial. Candara has a look which makes me think ‘classical’.
10 point Baskerville Old Face if I’m doing any considerable amount of writing on a computer. Most of the time, if I write anything I sit down behind my Underwood manual typewriter. Whatever that font is works for me.
My website runs Lucida Console, green font on a black background, to make it look all hackerish and cool, yet still being more legible than a proper terminal font.
Most of the stuff I write day-to-day is stuff I want to stand out, like resumes and such. I tend to use Century Gothic for academic papers because it’s easier to read; unless the professor is anal about the typeface she wants, or the paper absolutely positively has to conform to APA style, I’d rather be nice and use an easier-to-read font.
The rest of the time, I don’t care, so I just stick to the two I like and leave it at that.
Georgia – It’s a standard font in Ms Word. Easy to read.
Data files have to be courier new. It’s a fixed point type. 60 characters equals 60 bytes in a data file.
Sure. That falls under my exception “marketing materials or what not.”
Century Gothic is nice, but I think, in print, Times New Roman is easier to read. After all, that was the whole point of the typeface. YMMV, of course. I will agree that on-screen, sans serifs tend to look better.
To me, that font is a little too “airy,” but it is a very nice, clean, legible font. Like I said, my preference is actually for Minion for this sort of thing, but I think Times New Roman unfairly gets a bad rap.
Actually, when I look at Century Schoolbook at the same font size as the rest of the text on this page, it does look very pleasing, indeed. I admit, it does look a little better than TNR.