Courier: My New Favourite Font

I started writing my dissertation tonight.

In Courier.


The thing is, when I opened the new Word document and started typing the words "Chapter One", I suddenly couldn't stand the sight of Times New Roman. Currently, it makes me a little sick. Then I remembered a Slate article I read in which a surprising number of writers revealed that they use either Courier or Courier New when they compose.

So I tried it. And I really, really like the look of my Macintosh's Courier (Courier New seems too flimsly to stand up to a dissertation). So I'm keeping it, at least until I get sick of it and go back to good old Times New Roman, which is starting to resemble the fall-back, if-we're-not-married-by-the-time-we're-35-let's-get-married kind of guy. Reliable, but not the first choice. And I know that this will mess up the all-important running page count, since Courier takes up more space than Times New Roman. However, I have figured out the conversion: Courier 10 = Times New Roman 12.

When I was at the Gauntlet, we used to dread the appearance of Courier in an ad on production nights, because that meant that it used a font that our computers didn't have (Courier was the default backup). I remember the fix being relatively easy (convert the ad to EPS?) but it was never something you wanted to see at 3 a.m. Also, I remember James, as Opinions Ed, running the mandated weekly Students' Union-written piece in Courier on purpose because it was such an ugly font. The printers once called to check that that wasn't a mistake. It wasn't.