If the perfect typeface couldn’t make my writing better, it at least ensured I didn’t wear callowness on my sleeve. And so, I cycled through any number of stately serif fonts (Palatino, Georgia, Granjon, Galliard) searching for the right fit. Suddenly, I was able to make my poems look like something I’d find in the Paris Review. For an insecure young poet, access to WordPerfect (yes, I’m that old) and Microsoft Word felt like liberation. It’s a preoccupation that dates to my time studying creative writing in the mid-to-late 1990s, just as standalone word processors were yielding to home computers and the marvels of desktop publishing. I am a font aficionado but not an expert. Circuit’s preference for "readable" but fusty Times New Roman.
Still, for the font’s fans, which include the Department of Justice’s Civil Division apparently, no amount of reason, no matter how iron-clad, could excuse the D.C. And some have suggested it translates poorly from page to screen, a real problem given the judiciary’s increasing reliance on tablets. There’s the rococo ornateness of its “section” symbol, for one. Why Garamond? I should confess that I’ve used Garamond from time to time over the years, taken with what I saw as a kind of typographical alchemy - at once airy and compact, it’s the angel food cake of fonts. In a March edict that strongly “encouraged” its practitioners to use readable fonts, it singled out Garamond, with its elegant loops and delicate shoulders, for illegibility. The Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, perhaps the second most powerful court in the country, has had it with Garamond.
Update on Pennsylvania Government Transparency Laws Impacting Agencies and Their Contractors The Rules We Write By: What the Great Font Debate Can Teach Us About the Risks and Rewards of Defying Convention
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