Writing used to be so simple. You bought a typewriter and stacks of blank paper sat down and got on with it. Nowadays we're faced with a richness of choices. What kind of computer? What software? Well Macs and Scrivener in my case (too lazy and too stupid to use anything else).

But here's a big question that's much more difficult to answer. When you have your computer and your preferred writing package what exactly are you going to see on the screen as you write? What font? What size? What spacing?

This has driven me nuts for years. I've tried serif faces and sans ones. Different sizes. Different spacing between lines, different spacing between paragraphs. I spend a lot of time in front of these things. I want it to be right. Here, thanks to that wonderful writer <a title="Michael Marshall Smith " href="http://www.michaelmarshallsmith.com/" target="_blank">Michael Marshall Smith</a> who passed this on via Twitter is one solution that works for him, works for me now, and - who knows? - may even work for you. Not one I'd ever have dreamed of either.

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<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/optima1.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-6154" title="optima" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/optima1.jpg?w=220" alt="" width="220" height="300" /></a>The key thing to remember about your writing font and style is, of course, that it's there to suit you, not an eventual editor. Yes, editors will expect double spaced manuscripts in something like Arial or Helvetica these days (I don't know any who want a typewriter-style font). But that doesn't mean you have to write that way. Double spacing is particularly wasteful on screen it seems to me. The last few books I've written have been in 13pt Optima with 1.2 line spacing and a little space between paragraphs. That gives me a loose look on screen but is still very readable. You can see the draft first page of <em>Dante's Numbers</em> in that on the right - click for a bigger image.

Michael, however, goes back to the past a little, back all the way to monospaced typewriter fonts. I've tried these before but never really got on with them. The typewriter fonts you get as standard on Macs and Windows PCs always seem to me to be the worst of all possible worlds. They have that clean, dead clarity you expect of a computer but none of the character of a real typewriter. And there are real disadvantages too, if you see them that way. A true monospaced typewriter font comes in just one style - plain. There's no bold. No italic. What you see literally is what you get.

Now bold doesn't bother me. I'd never use that in a book anyway. But italics? I'm writing in Italy and from time to time I will need to italicise a foreign word since that's style. Also from time to time I will italicise a word as emphasis. I know that there are those of you out there who think this is a terrible thing to do, probably on a par with cruelty to small furry animals. But I disagree. So did Dickens, Herman Melville and a few others by the way. So there. I <em>want</em> italics.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/p221.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-6155" title="p22" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/p221.jpg?w=222" alt="" width="222" height="300" /></a>What do I do? Er, easy. I just underline of course. The way I used to when I worked on a typewriter. It's dead easy. And you know something? It looks great. Here is a screenshot of that same text in Michael's preferred font, P22 Typewriter, a commercial one that will cost you £10 or around $15 online (search for it in Google and you may get a 20 per cent discount coupon from fonts.com - I did). P22 is a very realistic looking typewriter font. It's slightly distressed and unpredictable. Seen large you'd probably think.. no way could I write in that. Seen at 13 pt in Scrivener's full-screen mode... well, I love it. It's easy to read and it gives me a feel for the fact I'm doing something other than simple word processing. I'm not writing a letter here. I'm writing a story, a fairy tale, a myth. Why the hell should I do this in some font designed for desktop processing? Where's the sense in that?

And here's the oddest thing. I mentioned yesterday that I sometimes print out book drafts in single spaced book style, with 9 or 10pt text, because they look different that way. The moment I converted my existing manuscript from Optima to P22 I started rewriting bits on the page. It <em>looked different.</em> Don't ask me why. I'm a writer, not a psychologist.

Would I deliver a book in this font? Course not. The publishers won't have it. But I have to export from Scrivener to Word to deliver anyway so it's no great problem to convert to double spaced Arial or something. Scrivener even does it for you. The only question is that underline versus italics one. Would publishers really prefer an old fashioned underline to a proper italic these days? Given that they set the book directly from your file I suspect the answer's no. Anyone out there have an opinion?

Here are those same files as high quality pdfs too so you can print them out and judge this for yourself, whether you have these fonts installed or not (at least I think that's how it works). If not tell me and I will pdf them as images. Thanks for the tip Michael - I owe you a beer.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/optima1.pdf">Optima</a>

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/p221.pdf">P22</a>