Font Of Knowledge
Writers worry about a lot of things. Did they get my manuscript? Did they like it? Will I ever get paid? Will I finish this damn article?
To this add another acute anxiety that I suffered a couple weeks ago:
Am I using the right font?
In early July I finished revision and editing of Gumshoe Frankenstein. This is a novel I began in 2017 as B.K.P.I., which sat dormant for years while the video game business ate my heart and intestines. I returned to it in earnest in 2022, "completing" it in November of that year. The world turned and stuff happened and the book shrunk from 61K words to 47K words during a copy edit -- too short for a noir crime novel, unless your name is James M. Cain -- and in the process of that edit I found plenty of things I no longer liked/wanted to adjust/needed to add. The upshot is I spent most of the past year re-writing my "completed" book. Now it sits at 68K words, and it says what I want it to say. Is it a new work? A huge revision? Best I can explain is it is a thorough house remodel with a substantial new addition.
Yay me, whatever. What's relevant is with the book complete it was time to submit and query. One of the first places I put it in was with the St. Martin’s Minotaur/ Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition, because why not? Submitting it in July instead of as part of the end-of-year manuscript rush might earn me some consideration. It's in the nature of a lottery ticket but Gretzky said you miss all the shots you never take, or something like that. So I put it in.
Then I saw this on Twitter:
Oof! My manuscript was in Courier New.
I have a writer's necessary arrogance. I believe my stuff is good enough to submit in longhand. (Considering my atrophied handwriting, which barely qualifies as a palsied scrawl, probably not, but go with it). I've sold six short stories as of this writing and I'm sure all of them had formatting faux paus. But I don't want to make an editor's life harder than it has to be, and if I'm borderline I'd hate for the freaking FONT to be what gets me rejected.
But what am I supposed to do? The manuscript is submitted. I could request it get pulled and then re-submit in Times New Roman, but that also creates tedious work for an editor. I decided to shrug and do nothing, which is often my approach, leavened with Knowing Better Next Time.
In the spirit of continuous improvement, I worked backwards to determine the origin of my Courier New heresy. The short story I was writing at the time was open in another tab and ... yep ... Courier New. It was the work of moment to change it, and I'll be in Times New Roman from here on out.
I traced my first use of Courier to the manuscript for "Teddy's Favorite Thing," my first sale in this field at Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine in 2023. Considering that manuscript good luck, I've used it as the kernal for everything I've written since, keeping the header and format (and font), before renaming, cutting the text, and trucking on. It's served me well. I'll continue to do this -- now adding a font change to my ritual.
But where did I go wrong. How did Courier get into my walled garden? WHAT WAS THE ORIGINAL SIN?
It goes back to the Shunn Manuscript -- the closest thing I could find to a universal standard for fiction writing, at least to judge by the many submission guidelines that cite it. This example sets out all the things inspriing insecurity in a new writer -- margins, indentations, page numbers, headers, footers. Everything.
Plus fonts.
Friends, the Shunn Manuscript is in Courier New, and that's why I used it.
What I missed was that the text recommend Times New Roman -- in Courier New! -- while offering this parenthetical:
(Some writers, myself included, still prefer Courier New, a monospaced font that resembles typewriter output. You can use that too if you like, but it’s probably on its way out, at least in fiction circles.)
AHHHHHH! Curse you, Shunn, curse you Courier New! I thought these were tablets from the mountain! I didn't read the fine print, whatever the font.
I kvetched for a bit then opened up my Gumshoe Frankenstein manuscript, to see how bad it was.
It was in Times New Roman!
I don't know when I changed from Courier to Times. Probably when B.K.P.I. was making (unsuccessful) rounds before I got deep into my revisions in late 2023. Since Gumshoe Frankenstein was built on the bones of that previous manuscript, the Times New Roman got carried forward, just as my short stories have maintained their Courier New roots since "Teddy." Or maybe it was always that way. I have enough to worry about without noticing fonts.
I needn't have worried! If Gumshoe Frankenstein gets shot down, it won't be down to the font I chose. Unless there's some perverse devil out there auto-rejecting Times New Roman manscripts in service of their Courier New fetish.
To hell with it. I'm going Comic Sans.