notes

[kaberett]

• One of the things Type:Rider explained to me (possibly), is why it is that I hate Times New Roman so much, namely that it was (apparently) designed to remain legible when printed cheaply on low-quality paper, which is to say, absolutely not the context even of printing at home these days (let alone screen display).
  
• I was briefly worried that in fact I just hate all serif fonts, given that I also loathe Computer Modern, but apparently everyone hates Computer Modern so I can just retreat hissing back into the shadows of Garamond, or something.
  
• One of the things my supervisor keeps saying to me about my writing is that she understands what I mean but I need to unpack a lot! more! and I keep being wildly miscalibrated as to what this actually looks like. I HAVE REALISED (late last night, when I really wanted to have already been asleep, but so it goes) that some of what's going on here is that I'm writing to her-as-audience because I really don't have a good sense of General Geochemistry Knowledge in the field (for a variety of reasons this margin etc) and I have spent a lot of time trying to express ideas etc specifically to her in writing so... no wonder, really! Which will hopefully let me adjust expectations accordingly and maybe start writing in a more appropriately targeted fashion in Science Contexts.

Comments

[me_and]

Common wisdom is serif fonts for print in general, yes. Times New Roman in particular was apparently designed specifically for being legible with poor quality printing on poor quality paper; it was designed for the Times newspaper in the era of metal type, when the volume of daily papers being printed necessitated using cheap paper stock and limited the ability to do quality checking while still meeting the morning print deadlines.

[passingbuzzards]

ahh, how interesting! thank you for this knowledge