Tips and Timesavers

Non-proportional Fonts

All fonts are created equal. But some are more equal than others.

The terms 'proportional' and 'non-proportional' are quite misleading. Contrary to what their names suggest, a proportional font is one where different shaped letters can take up different amounts of space (eg: Times New Roman).

For the purposes of a manuscript (and particularly wordcount or booklength in publishing) it is important that you use a non-proportional font (or monospaced or fixed-width font). That is, a font where every character takes up the same amount of space regardless of whether it's our skinny friends 'i', 'l' or 't'; or our fat little friends 'w' and 'm'.

This is so that you can reliably know that each 60-space line will have 60 characters in it for the purposes of accurate word-counting. (Try it; Courier = 60 'i's to a line whereas Times Roman = 120 'i's to a line).

NOTES ABOUT FONT SELECTION

  1. Don't buck the system when it comes to fonts. You might think that providing your manuscript in Goudy Oldstyle instead of Courier will be delightfully refreshing or a point of difference; it won't, it might just annoy an editor or editorial assistant enough that they won't put your book through to the next pass.

  2. 'Serif' (with little dressy bits on letters) or 'sans serif' (without little dressy bits) is not the same as proportional and non-proportional.

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