Just wanted to share with you all the font suggestions I got in reply to the previous post:
People liked the following as possible font choices:
Explore and enjoy, fellow font-o-philes. 
Jack's Stuff
A beautiful storm of politics, religion, and everything in-between
Tagged with paper writing …
Fonts
So I was poking around the internet the other day and found this little article about how certain fonts can potentially help improve people’s grades.
Obviously, I was somewhat skeptical – brilliantly academic folks grade students on the quality of their argument, not their font choice, right? Still, I’ve been writing a LOT of papers these days, so the concept got me thinking: what all does – or should – go into the presentation of a paper? How much time, if any, should be spent on the presentation of written information? I, after all, am I big fan of infographics, so shouldn’t the presentation of the written word be just as important to me?
To answer this question, I went ahead and broke down how I have historically presented papers:
Early College (Freshman and Sophomore year):
Font of choice: Times New Roman if I wanted to be boring or Cochin if I was feeling rebellious.
Word Processor: Almost exclusively Microsoft Word, although I once wrote a final in “Writely” – the predecessor to Google Docs – just to say I could.
Spacing: Double spaced
Citation style: MLA
Page numbers: Yes, sometimes
The result, then, was something like this:
Freshman Jack (written the night before, of course)
Late College (Junior and Senior Year)
Font of choice: almost always Cochin.
Word Processor: Microsoft Word.
Spacing: Double spaced to 1.5
Citation style: Chicago footnoting
Page numbers: Yes, right-justified
[EDIT] Paragraphs: justified text (making it a big column of text)
These changes were very intentional, and had a lot to do with having my writing mature. The change in spacing was due to having to cram all of my text into infinitely less space than the assignment allowed for. The switch the Chicago citation style was partly to look more professional, but also because I saw it as maintaining the integrity of the sentence. That is, the tiny superscripted number of a footnote only jarred your eye and your thoughts for a moment, whereas the MLA in-line format made you immediately take notice of the reference. What’s more, the Chicago style allowed you put MORE information in the footer, allowing you to actually write MORE in a paper but still take up less space. The right-justified page numbers was for ease-of-use (the professor could just thumb through a paper from the corner) and stylistic. [Edit] Also, I went through a phase where I would justify my papers to fill up the entire page. It was very aesthetically pleasing, but I was never sure if it was more readable or not.
The result were papers that often looked like this:
Senior Jack (only partially written the night before)
Grad/Divinity School
Font of choice: Cambria
Word Processor: Apple Pages
Spacing: Double spaced to 1.5
Citation style: Chicago footnoting
Page numbers: Never
You’ll notice a few changes here. The switch to Cambria font from Cochin is presentation choice – Cochin would stand out too much, and since Cambria is now the standard font for the Macintosh edition of Microsoft Word, I figured it was an easy way to blend in. Ironically, I have now chosen to write all of my papers in Apple’s pages program, both for ease-of-use reasons (its all Apple-like) and for practical reasons (it doesn’t overwhelm me with options like Microsoft does, but let’s me just focus on the text). Moreover, Pages has an awesome note-system that I just like better than Word. The reason for the spacing and the citation style are the same as above, and the lack of page numbers has to do with not wanting TA’s to judge me for going over the prescribed page limit.
The result is quite practical-looking, I think:
Written just hours before class. I have regressed.
(You may also notice that my writing itself has improved dramatically over the years. Learnin’ does that)
[Edit] I just discovered that Pages ’09 has full screen view. I may have found my next purchase, and I may have found my way to writing Zen.
[Edit] One more thing: I’m fighting to bring back “loc. cit.” It’s just more accurate, dangit!
So – with all this in mind – I have the following questions for you, dear reader(s):
1.) Got any font suggestions?
2.) Which word processor do you use?
3.) Any other sylistic tips?
4.) Do you think professors even CARE about any of this?
Let me know!
