Fonts Make a Difference (this post may bore you) 

Sorry to post about another completely non-political topic, but I have to share a very important discovery I made this week that made me realize that I worked harder in high school than I thought. I already mentioned that I use a Mac, and I've been using Appleworks and similar programs for word processing over the last few years. For high school essays and things, I always used double spaced Times, size 12. This always seemed to work for me, and I never thought about using other fonts. Last year, I took AP English and AP European History, which means that I was writing a minimum of about 6 pages worth of essays every week. To make things worse, I had a serious case of senioritis last year, and I wrote most of these essays at about 2:30 in the morning, sometimes later. The recommended length for an essay in European history was 3 or 4 pages, and I always made sure to insert enough useless filler to hit that mark. When it came time to write the 12 page term paper, I did the same. All of this cost me a lot of sleep and caused an enormous amount of stress.

This brings us to the present day. I was writing a paper a couple weeks ago, and I suddenly realized that I had never tried Times New Roman before. I always figured that it was the same as Times, so I hadn't really given it much thought, but I typed the paper in TNR just to see what would happen. When I finished, I looked at the font and realized that it seemed larger. To test that theory, I found an old European history essay in my documents folder and converted it to TNR, and I was amazed. It immediately went from 3 to 5 pages without anything being added! At that point, I realized that I had been doing about 1/3 more work than I had to all throughout high school, and all because I decided to go with the "old school" version of the Times font! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH THAT KNOWLEDGE WOULD HAVE HELPED ME? I COULD'VE GOTTEN HOURS AND HOURS OF EXTRA FRIGGIN' SLEEP LAST YEAR IF I HAD KNOWN! IT TOOK ME 7 HOURS TO WRITE A 10 PAGE ENGLISH PAPER WHEN IT COULD'VE TAKEN 5! I FINISHED THAT PAPER AT 7:15 THE MORNING IT WAS DUE! I HAD BEEN WORKING TOO HARD THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' TIME! In addition, Appleworks pages have about 350 words in TNR, whereas Microsoft Word pages have 250, so I was doing too much work to begin with, but Times makes the pages almost 450 words long!

I just gave this theory another test. I actually found my English paper, which was 10 pages long in Times, and converted it to Times New Roman. Guess what? It's now 13 pages long! Those last 3 pages took 2 hours to write! I had to miss school that day because I stayed up all night writing! MY DAD HAD TO DRIVE TO THE SCHOOL AND GIVE THE PAPER TO A FRICKIN' CROSSING GUARD IN THE PARKING LOT! I could've been done with that thing by 5:30 and gotten a whole hour of sleep (which was about average for me last Spring)! This is crap! I was writing more than I had to for 6 years of my life! All right, I have to finish my scheduling forms now. Sorry if I bored/disturbed/frightened/confused/enraged/(insert verb here) you. I needed to get that off my chest. Remember,
ALWAYS USE TIMES NEW ROMAN!