Hey guys, this is mainly for the authors on the board, but if you have any input feel free to chime in as well.

I'm about to start writing a new story, and I realized, as I began that for each of my stories I usually assign a certain font or style to it whilst writing.

Devil You Know (Ajenson, 16)

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Equilibrium (Proxima Nova, 11)

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Each has its own unique feel which lends to how I view the story as I'm writing it, and I more often than not find myself struggling to capture the story as I envision it in my head when I switch fonts.

I know a lot of people just stick with stock standard Arial or Verdana, but I'm curious if any of you have your own unique fonts for writing.

 

Oh boy, where to start? Oh, I know. I hate Arial and Times New Roman, almost as much as I hate Comic Sans.

If I need a "go-to" font that 99% of computers have as a replacement for either of those I gravitate towards Calibri (instead of Arial) and Cambria (instead of TNR). But I don't use those for myself very much - just sometimes you need a font that you can trust whoever is going to open the file will have.

My favorite variations on typical sans serif and serif fonts are Myriad Pro Light and Minion Pro. If I am sending out a PDF file or printing something for someone else to read I generally go for Minion Pro.

But I don't use those for the writing process outside of "make PDF" or "print."

When I am working on a draft I almost always use a sans serif monospaced font. Something about it makes creating content significantly easier for me. When working on a draft I use 1.5 point spacing and a line break between paragraphs.

Consolas 12pt



Droid Sans Mono 11pt



DejaVu Sans Mono 11pt



Inconsolata 12pt



...and another 3-4 monospaced fonts that I use a little less often. InputSans, Source Code Pro, Courier, etc.

Once I am more or less happy with my draft and am ready to edit said draft I will change the font to one that isn't monospaced and use tabs instead of linebreaks to separate paragraphs. I'm particularly fond of Corbel for some reason.

Corbel 12pt



Monaco 10pt



Ubuntu 12pt



...and sometimes Myriad Pro, Calibri, Verdana, etc. Again though usually sans serif - serif fonts are great when I'm printing, but they usually make my eyes hurt on screens for too long.

When I'm ready to print it out and take it somewhere? Time to bring out the serif fonts! Minion Pro or Garamond usually, sometimes Cambria, Courier New or Courier Prime.

 

Windows comes with Garamond doesn't it? And most people use Windows. Not sure about Mac.

Someone gave me Minion Pro and Myriad years ago. It was part of an Adobe font package or something? I've copy/pasted the ttf (?) font files religiously ever since.

Now Helvetica is a font I've wanted to have for a long time. But it doesn't come with Windows and isn't free. It is quite a nice one though.

 

Obviously we can't tell you where to get things that cost money for free on the forum. Unfortunately a lot of users seem to circumvent that rule by going on IRC, the scoundrels.