Please don’t make me read a hand-written book
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” they say. But what about its font?
A new Wordspin article reminded me of a pretty unfortunate literary experience I had a couple years ago.
Back in Washington DC, I went to a bookstore event where author Monica Ali read passages from her new book Brick Lane and answered readers’ pressing plot questions. No one questioned font choice.
I picked up a copy of Brick Lane just before moving to London for a year to study. The book was about a woman from India who had come to London and was adjusting to the alien new world around her. I wasn’t coming from India, but it still piqued my interest. And, by coincidence, I soon found a flat just off London’s famous Indian food mecca: Brick Lane.
The first few chapters were fairly engaging. I was enjoying the drama, the descriptions of otherness, her shock at coming face to face with revolving doors - it was good fun.
But then the letters from the heroine’s sister began. And they were all written in italics. Page after page of tiny text that looked almost hand-written. I struggled on for a while, thinking “Come on! I can’t be this shallow! I can get through this!” But I couldn’t. I got tired of having to re-read lines. My mind drifted. My eyes glazed over. I tried skipping the letters but then the story stopped making sense. And I never found out how Brick Lane’s heroine ended her London adventure…because of a font.
What about you - has formatting ever affected your experience with a written text? I’d love to hear about it!
September 21st, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Absolutely - there are few things I like less than a book which is printed in what I would describe as a ’stupid font’. I used to work in publishing and I confess that when I received manuscript submissions that were printed in an unreadable format - or, heaven forbid, handwritten - they were quickly filed in my recycling bin. I would have thrown out WAR AND PEACE if it was typed in Comic Sans…
September 24th, 2007 at 10:59 am
I would have done the same! An author has to take him/herself seriously - and Mattel-like fonts just don’t do the trick.
Perhaps we should hold a course on “matching your font to your message”…
September 24th, 2007 at 11:43 am
So, here’s another one. The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones looks at what makes Italy tick (or not tick, as the case may be). It’s a great book…almost. Unfortunately, large parts of some chapters are written in italics. And worse than that…as far as I could tell, there’s NO REASON for the italics whatsoever. They aren’t even letters from Brick Lane. They are just there, looking blurry on the page. It drove me nuts.