[NSFL]

Thanks to Eric Vail and Iowa_Flames_Fan for your perspectives. It's good to hear from the people who do the marking.

What I ended up doing is writing my paper in about 5 different fonts, then I just changed my font to TNR. I think all I really needed was a change from the usual, 4 years of staring at TNR. I wasn't trying to make my paper longer or anything. I actually had problems staying within the 3 page maximum. It's actually harder to write a short paper than a long one. Well, alright, no, but it was hard to write a paper 3 pages long. I've never done that before.

Originally Posted by icarus

Check your course outline. The font expectation may be in there.

If not, see if the outline makes reference to a specific style guide. MLA is pretty standard, but some social sciences have their own style guides. The style guide will tell you what font to use.

Oh I definitely read that 14 page outline. Oddly enough, there was no mention of referencing style or font. I couldn't believe it, 14 pages and nothing.

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Courier New will increase the size of the paper by a good deal, and it wont look like it either.

I had no problems using that font with profs.

Really? I find Courier New makes a huge difference in the appearance of your paper. Makes everything look really really spaced out.

Originally Posted by JD

Well if it's all about you, just type in whatever font you want.

When you're done, change to the font your prof wants to see, likely Times New Roman or Arial, as already covered in depth.

Seems simple to me!

And that's what I did.

Originally Posted by Barnes

And for god's sake, don't underline things. That's one of my pet peeves. The underline exists because typewriters could not italicize text. If it's not a hyperlink, it should not have an underline.

I wholly agree with that. I can't believe the history writing guide at the U of C still has things underlined.

Originally Posted by llama64

That said, use sans-serif fonts for headers since it looks nicer in bolder or larger sizes.

I'll keep that in mind for next time. I always hated the way TNR looked in a larger font.

Originally Posted by Phaneuf3

nothing says professional like comic sans.

One of my friends did that. He's a second year university student, I could have smacked him. His paper was already late.

Originally Posted by KTrain

Take a look at this site: http://fadtastic.net/2006/03/12/the-...ives-of-fonts/.

The guy looked at the difference in his essay grades based solely on the type of font he used. Using a serif font is supposed to be easier to read in print.

Thanks for that link! I think I may try Georgia on my next paper, see how it goes.

Anyhow, I think I learned more about fonts in 1 day than I thought I would ever learn in a life time. Thank you all very much for your responses.