{"id":524,"date":"2012-05-01T15:32:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T03:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=524"},"modified":"2012-05-01T15:32:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-01T03:32:00","slug":"just-because-you-can-it-doesnt-mean-you-should","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=524","title":{"rendered":"Just because you can, it doesn\u2019t mean you should"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I first started writing professionally, I wrote with a ballpoint pen on an unlined octavo-sized newsprint pad.\u00a0 My scribbled pages were then sent to Janice, who processed them on her Imperial typewriter before sending them on to the copy chief.<\/p>\n

A year or so later, my boss turned up at my desk one day and asked if I could type.<\/p>\n

\u2018No.\u00a0 Not really,\u2019 I told him.<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh well, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll figure it out,\u2019 he said. \u00a0And he plonked a seriously-second-hand Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter on the desk in front of me.\u00a0 That afternoon, I typed my own copy for the very first time.<\/p>\n

A few years on, and the over-worked Olivetti 22 was replaced with a brand new Olivetti 32 \u2013 although often my copy was still retyped by one of the secretaries \u2013 usually on an IBM Selectric machine \u2013 before heading to its final destination.<\/p>\n

And then everything changed.\u00a0 As a result of a series of complicated (and unlikely) events, I acquired a \u2018portable\u2019 PC.\u00a0 It operated off two 5\u00bd inch disks (one for the application, one for the data), and it weighed about the same as a small car.\u00a0 But it did enable me to render words in both bold<\/strong> and italic<\/em> faces.\u00a0 And it did offer a selection of about ten different fonts.<\/p>\n

Among those of us who grew up with the constraints of a traditional typewriter, the new choices meant that we could now choose a serif face or a sans-serif face.\u00a0 And \u2013 just occasionally \u2013 we might even choose a serif face for the bulk of the document and a sans-serif face for a small passage that we wished to highlight or otherwise set aside from the words around it.<\/p>\n

But not everyone began life with the limited choices of a Lettera 32.\u00a0 Today, there are many many writers who have always had the choice of 50 or 100 or even 1,000 fonts.\u00a0 And, unfortunately, more than a few of these writers seem to think that using a dozen or so different fonts in the same document will make their writing more interesting.\u00a0 It won\u2019t.\u00a0 And it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 It just makes it harder for the reader to read.<\/p>\n

Clever art directors and skilled typographers can sometimes get away with mixing several fonts.\u00a0 Writers seldom can.\u00a0 For clarity and ease of communication, it is almost always best to restrict and restrain.<\/p>\n

Yes, it is now easy to render every paragraph \u2013 even every sentence \u2013 in a different font.\u00a0 But, just because you can, it doesn\u2019t mean you should.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I first started writing professionally, I wrote with a ballpoint pen on an unlined octavo-sized newsprint pad.\u00a0 My scribbled pages were then sent to Janice, who processed them on her Imperial typewriter before sending them on to the copy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}