• Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.

    This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.

    Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…

    • Don't give offence
    • Don't take offence

    We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.

    You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box

Brush Up Your Book Proposal!

Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
Another quick video chat… thanks to everyone in the Huddle who helped shape it!

 
Hi Pete, Thanks for putting this video chat online. From now on I will increase the gap size before each new paragraph.

I discovered Litopia at the end of last year, so I will check backwards for all your and others good advice.

I do not mind reading short articles online, but if something is several pages or more, I prefer to read it bit by bit or even print the article. For me, you cannot beat a printed page of fiction or non-fiction.
 
Great talk @AgentPete. It reminded me of one of my MA Eng Lit module at BSU called Materialities. It discussed typography whose history is so fascinating. For anyone whose interested in the subject, Why Fonts Matters by Sarah Hyndman, Just My Type by Simon Garfield and Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton are worth a read. Also, the documentary Helvetica is a fascinating watch Helvetica (2007) | WatchDocumentaries.com
 
Last edited:
Invest in You. Get Full Membership now.
Great talk @AgentPete. It reminded me of one of my MA Eng Lit module at BSU called Materialities. It discussed typography whose history is so fascinating. For anyone whose interested in the subject, Why Fonts Matters by Sarah Hyndman and Thinking With Type by Ellen Lupton are worth a read. Also, the documentary Helvetica is a fascinating watch Helvetica (2007) | WatchDocumentaries.com
I saw that documentary and really liked it!

Helvetica seems a much more sophisticated sans serif to me than boring old Arial, particularly in its range of weights and variants. But still use with caution, it can look quite dated (remember how it was used for almost everything in the ‘70s).

I do think that writers need to develop some awareness of font use / page design, so well done whoever put your Eng Lit course together!

Irritatingly, I forgot to discuss justification in the video. I advise against it, which surprises many writers, because printed books are of course almost always justified. But – publishers employ designers, usually pretty good ones, who pay great attention to all aspects of page design, and can make justification work pretty well. I’m not convinced that Word can equal those subtleties, and the risk in producing a manuscript page consisting of perfectly straight left and right margins is that it will simply look dull. Straight lines often do :)

There’re another reason, too, for leaving your ms “ragged”, i.e. ranged left, and that it to leave some psychological room for the publisher to invest themselves in… an unjustified ms is “raw” state… this is subtle but I think quite important...
 
I found a publisher yesterday that is asking for submissions as follows:

--Please note we only accept submissions in a Word processing document (no PDFs).
--We prefer just single-spaced work with the manuscript.
--Garamond and Palatino are our favourite fonts.
 
It’s such a weird / surreal world we find ourselves in at the moment… I’m fully expecting the Powers That Be to mandate Comic Sans for everything! :)
Arial Narrow is somewhat less brutal. But these are weird and brutal times. The earth herself is unsettled, little wonder perhaps that we are too. And Comic thingie is likewise ....all rounded and friendly and cuddly, all rounded. But still yelling in yer face.

"Why do designers hate Comic Sans?


Image result for comic sans font


Business

Unlike most professional fonts, however, Comic Sans letterforms often force designers to adapt the print or online space to the font. Designers think the designer of the Comic Sans letterforms got lazy and should have paid more attention and added more value."

Education

"Comic Sans use should not be justified by claims of increased readability or benefits to dyslexic students or indeed for handwriting, but if you just like it, and your pupils like it, there is no good reason you should not use it."
 

Latest Articles By Litopians

  • The Joy of Lit Mags
    While my first novel is tentatively making its way towards agents who already have too much to read, ...
  • Advertising and Social Media
    There has been much discussion in writing circles about how much a writer has to self-promote these ...
  • Future Abstract: Fights at Night
    SATIRE ALERT: The following abstract is entirely fictional and does not represent actual events or s ...
  • Great Novel Openings Quiz
    As writers, we all know how important it is to grip the reader from the very start. Intriguing, surp ...
  • In The Summertime
    In the early seventies, I had a semi-Afro hairstyle and a shaggy beard. . I thought I looked like th ...
  • Working with a Literary Agent
    The Querying In a previous post I mentioned that I was back in the query trenches. To recap, my earl ...
  • Danger! Danger!
    What is perhaps the most feared creature of the Borneo rainforest, I hear you ask? Who is the King o ...
Back
Top