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Friday, 18 May 2007, 16:00 GMT 17:00 UK

Me and my font

Following an overwhelming response to the Magazine's recent feature on the 50th birthday of the ubiquitous Helvetica typeface, this week sees readers picking their favourite fonts.

Whether its Comic Sans, Webdings or Verdana, fonts elicit strong feelings from many users.

We have asked readers to explain the reasons they fell in love with their favourite font, or what rankles about their most-loathed font.

MONDAY

Monotype's Albertus by Jordan Lund, 37, from Portland, US

TUESDAY

Microsoft's Verdana by Megan Robertson, 47, from Cheshire

WEDNESDAY

Bookman by John Downer, Roxy font designer, from Iowa, US

THURSDAY

Monotype's Gill Sans by Carrie Schwartz, from New Orleans, US

FRIDAY

Gyom Seguin's Trashed by Joshua van der Broek, 30, designer, from Brighton


Below is a selection of your comments.

Changing the font, readjusting the margins, adding extra lines between paragraphs: these ploys don't fool professors. They just annoy us. As I have written on offending students' papers, "Your attempts to disguise the insufficient length of your essay detract from its overall quality." It seems more professional than "How stupid do you think I am?"
Angela Ellis, Gainesville, FL

If only I'd known the bookman trick when I was a student! My favourite was and is always Garamond, it could turn a mediocre essay into something that appeared much more intellectual.
Nicola Davidson, Edinburgh

John Downer may be feeling smug for helping people fill up their page quotas, but what if you wrote too much? For my final year project I had to reach for Book Antiqua in order to fit everything in.
Andy Smith, Reading, Berks

In two universities over four years I've never been given a page quota. It has always been a word count that we've had to aim for, and which unfortunately eliminates the usefulness of the tip offered by Mr Downer!
Alexandra, Sheffield

I have an elderly academic relative who regularly changes the typeface when sending word processed letters to avoid wearing the software out. He's a fan of letterpress printing and even hand composition when available.
Steve Morton, Cirencester, UK

I agree with Megan, Verdana is crisp and clear on screen. Arial is like "so" last century!
Jen, Wallasey, Merseyside

I change the font on my blog every few weeks, to help keep the look fresh. I've been through Verdana, Tahoma, and Trebuchet, and now I'm letting it spend a few weeks rendered in classic Arial. But Comic Sans will never touch it in a million years!
Andy, Rabat, Malta

Verdana was designed to be readable at small sizes on a computer screen. As my eye-sight is not as good as it could be, Verdana allows me to read emails with ease. I also find it round and pleasing to the eye... just like me.
Andy Chernick, Bushey

Anyone that uses Comic Sans as a font deserves to wallow in a pitiful state of mispronunciation, spelling-errors and punctuation blunders for all of eternity. That font makes me sick.
Rebecca Bouch, Manchester

I've been taken by Galliard ever since I met it. It has the right balance of classical appeal and legibility.
E Thompson, London, England

Fonts should be as interesting as they can possibly be. There should be a font set up that randomly selects styles while you type!
Bill Lucas, Canada




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RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Monotype
Linotype
Gyom Seguin
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