TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: Favourite font for long passages? From:Michael Lewis <lewism -at- BRANDLE -dot- COM -dot- AU> Date:Thu, 29 Jan 1998 18:02:27 +1100
There's a close approximation to Palatino, called Book Antiqua, included
in MS TrueType font packs; Bitstream also have Zapf Calligraphic, which
is from the same designer and is essentially a later, slightly refined
version of Palatino. I like it for small quantities of text such as
letters, but it's a little too idiosyncratic for book-length material.
Garamond (eg, Bitstream's Classical Garamond) is easy on the eye.
Bitstream also have a rather nice Aldine (Aldine 721) and a good
Baskerville. In general, for book-length text you should probably (IMO)
stay with old-style or transitional faces.
Janet Barry wrote:
>
> Greetings all:
>
> I'm writing a Getting Started type of manual for a grapher software
> application, and can't decide on a font for the longer chunks of
> text.
>
> Several years ago I wrote a manual in Word on a Macintosh, and
> used Palatino as the main text font. It's one of my favourites. Now,
> I use a PC and applications such as WordPerfect and Corel Draw. Is
> there a similar font to Palatino available?
>
> What fonts do you "pros" prefer?
--
Michael Lewis
Brandle Pty Limited, Sydney, Australia
PO Box 1249, Strawberry Hills, NSW 2012
Suite 8, The Watertower, 1 Marian St, Redfern 2016 http://www.ozemail.com.au/~lewism
Tel +61-2-9310-2224 ... Fax +61-2-9310-5056