Courier New?

Follow the agent's instructions. AW threads only talk about general guidelines. Whatever the agent requests wins.

Welcome to AW!

Roulette said:

I'm new to this site, so please excuse me if I'm repetitive. I did do a search, but couldn't find my question anywhere.

Starting with Cathy C, who gives excellent advice, everyone says that submissions to agents should be in Courier New. Although they do give some valid reasons, when I look at various agent web sites, they all say that they prefer Times New Roman. Now I'm confused. Do I submit what the agents want, or do I follow your suggestions? Help!

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I agree to first and foremost follow an agent's specific guidelines, but after that, IME, Courier New is no longer the standard, but still acceptable. Times New Roman 12 point seems to be/becoming more standard, so I always used that unless an agent told me specifically otherwise.

~suki

Some threads talk about the history of publishing. From what I understand, Courier is a standard because it's a monotype font, easy on the eyes, and can easily be used to calculate word count.

I agree to do whatever the guidelines call for (that pretty much a given not just for fonts, but for any other particulars). Personally, I use Dark Courier unless I have a reason not to; it prints just a little darker than Courier New (without being bold) and I find it easier to read and more attractive on the page. You can download the font from many sites on the web. TNR is much more accepted these days than it used to be, and, as you noted, it will often be the preferred font.

Finally found Dark Courier- http://www.protext.com/support/PTFonts.htm

Thanks AC.

Yeah, you go by what the editor/agent/whoever you're submitting to says, and then "probably" default to Courier if you can't find anything mentioning submission font, though I've read posts around here where people say they have submitted (when font is not specified) using Times New Roman with no problem.

Courier was the de facto standard font used by typewriters for decades (see the article below), and as soon as printers for personal computers got good enough (especially the daisywheel and 24-pin dot-matrix "Near Letter Quality" ones), to reproduce it reasonably, it began to be specified/remained the standard for manuscript submission. This is easy to understand - editors and agents want every submission to be as much as possible like the one (or the million) before, so they don't have to be looking at a dozen different fonts every day. But finally they're able to specify something else and be sure most all of the writers they would be interested in can read their instructions and choose the specified font and size.

Here's a really interesting (if you're into this stuff!) article on the Courier font:
http://www.slate.com/id/2095809/

ETA: For the first paragraph I mean "Courier New" which apparently a variant meant to be easier read on a then-low-resolution computer screen for a computer running Microsoft Windows, as described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courier_(typeface)

How about unerlining vs. italics? I've read in many places that italics are hard on the eyes of agents and they prefer underlining. However, one of my critters tells me that's old school and to just italicize.

Dreamer76 said:

How about unerlining vs. italics? I've read in many places that italics are hard on the eyes of agents and they prefer underlining. However, one of my critters tells me that's old school and to just italicize.

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I underline and I format TNR 12. My agent has never said anything and that's how he subs them too.

More on Courier, etc.

The Dark Courier font is a Hewlett-Packard font, available for free directly from the HP website. The location is very, very hard to find, but I know where it is. I checked just now to make sure that it is still correct. You may download it from here.

The Dark Courier mentioned several posts above is the same font (HP Dark Courier).

My own essay on Courier (PDF file with lots of examples) is definitely worth reading for anyone who is interested in the subject or has questions about Courier ("Can you use any kind of Courier? Does it have to be Courier New?" etc.)

Underlining vs. italics? If I did not know what someone wanted, I would use underlining.

Dreamer76 said:

How about unerlining vs. italics? I've read in many places that italics are hard on the eyes of agents and they prefer underlining. However, one of my critters tells me that's old school and to just italicize.

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Underlining is another legacy thing - typewriters (manual ones anyway, which a lot of writers used) don't do italics, but you can overstrike with the underscore _ to do underlining to indicate italics. And apparently agents, editors and typesetters are still used to seeing underlining to indicate italics, along with all the hand-drawn editing marks that have traditionally been used on typewritten manuscripts.

ComicBent said:

The Dark Courier font is a Hewlett-Packard font, available for free directly from the HP website. The location is very, very hard to find, but I know where it is. I checked just now to make sure that it is still correct. You may download it from here.

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Download link doesn't work anymore. The one I posted (gotten from 1 of 4 links) was the only one I could find.

Yes, it still works

CupOfDice,

It happens to us all. We try a link, and for some reason it does not work, but then it does later. It must have happened to you.

The link still works. I downloaded the file just now to make sure.

Are you sure you tried the same link that I posted? A long, long time ago (eight or nine years, maybe) the file was at a different location on the HP site, if my memory serves me properly.

But the posted link works. You can also Google "lj611en.exe" (the name of the font file), and the link will pop up.

On another aspect of this thread ... All typewriters, manual or electric, had the underline/underscore key. The IBM Selectric had a special ball with the font on it. You could switch from the Courier ball to the ball that had a sans-serif font of about 18pt (as well as I can recall), or to a ball that had a frilly font. I think there was an italics ball, too. But these styles were used mostly for headings, not for words within paragraphs. It was cumbersome to change from one ball to another just for a few letters. In those days you always underlined for text that was to be printed in italics.

Best ...

Ah, it works now. Also thought it was the same link i got yesterday (which didn't work). Oh well...

It just happens sometimes

Yeah, as I said, it happens to us all.