Inspired by a recent documentary called Helvetica, about the now-ubiquitous 50-year-old font, Slate asked a bunch of prominent authors to tell them what fonts they compose in, and why. Not one of the authors named Helvetica, which is not surprising, considering how crappy it looks on a typical PC. What is surprising is that one of the crappiest of all fonts – Courier – got plenty of love, with five of the 10 author respondents naming it or one of its variations as their favorite.
Author Andrew Vacchs supplies a fairly convincing argument for Courier, though:
I write everything in Courier 12, because I write for publication, not pleasure. Since I cannot control the font the (eventual) publisher selects, what do I care how it looks on my screen? Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts—works just as good for a N.Y. Times op-ed as a screenplay or a short story.
Judging by the full array of author comments, it appears that writing with Courier is like writing in an empty white room with no windows: all that’s left is you and the words. Still, do writers really need to act like monks in an abbey? Why not try some Big Caslon once in awhile, with a sprinkling of Zapf Dingbats?
Part of the ‘loyalty’ to Courier and its variations might be sheer pragmatism - generally speaking, it’s what the publishers want. It can be a jarring moment when a manuscript created in Times New Roman gets converted to Courier and it’s suddenly 150 pages longer… Even more jarring when you get THAT call from your editor. In the long run, it’s easiest to start off how you’re going to end up. That way everybody’s on the same page (literally AND metaphorically) from the outset.
>>Why not try some Big Caslon once in awhile, with a sprinkling of Zapf Dingbats
I read the article, and it looks like the answer is in the rest of the quote from Andrew Vachss (spelling, man!): “Fancy fonts are fine for blogs, just as calligraphy is fine for diaries. But when you’re writing for anyone other than yourself, you want to get as universal as possible.” Since all of the people quoted are published writers, they are aiming for what makes their readers’ lives easy.
Actually, I think the main reason people have an affection/nostalgia for Courier comes from its intended resemblance to typewritten text. Also, Courier was commonly used for old dot-matrix printers, and it’s also the standard font in some text-editing software. People got used to its monospaced weirdness, kind of like the persistent preference for vacuum tube audio or vinyl LPs.