Over on fadtastic, Andrew Whitacre notes that Times New Roman has been removed as the default font in Office 2007 betas in favor of a new MS san serif font, Calibri (read about the new fonts in Office 2007).
Whitacre also raises some good questions about this change:
But what will happen to Times New Roman? In ten years, will it be just another term-paper alternative? Will instructors’ syllabi accept Calibri, or will they stand firm with Times because so many Word documents are still printed out to be read? Would you ever write a paper in Calibri because it’s easier to read on a screen, and then change it to Times at the last moment for your print reader? What about Phil’s theory about The Secret Lives of Fonts—is Calibri so pretty that universities will experience a round of aesthetics-inspired grade-inflation?
The good: with this change, students will need to be taught to make conscious choices about font use depending on whether the document is meant for reading primarily in print or on the screen, something that visual rhetoric and new media theory already encourages us to teach.
The bad: they may not often make the choice even after we teach them to in writing classes (sigh).
More important: I'm wondering if this isn't a trend toward the word processing document becoming primarily a text to be read online? If I think about all of the word processing documents I have received and created over the last year, the majority were not meant primarily to be printed out by others or I did not print them out myself. Part of this is influenced by collaboration and feedback. So many of the word processing docs I get or create are drafts that are shared electronically. Writing teachers regularly make use of Words commenting feature, a revision tool which is designed for screen use. In what other ways have word processing docs become screen texts and how does this influence the teaching of writing?
Paper Free Semester
During the semesterI just finished, I went paper-free. The only dead trees I accepted were in-class writing assignments.
I found the experience liberating. Maybe I'll write more about it sometime.
Dennis G. Jerz
Jerz's Literacy Weblog
Screen version was better, anyway
Times New Roman was always an ugly, unreadable printed font. But you'd be hard-pressed to find another serif font that displays so well on the screen (esp. without ClearType running); even the pixel-font meisters at miniml haven't topped the basic screen version of TNR.
Of course, why would anyone want to look at a serif font on screen anyway? :-)
font requirements
In my undergrad and graduate experiences, professors have not asked for a serif font in printed papers. In fact, many have begun to ask for the sans-serif fonts (specifically Verdana) because they can be wider and more open and easier to read when the reader has sight difficulties.
What I do find alarming is that these PC-specific font may cause problems for those of us who use Macs if they do become required for publication.
I think Microsoft is really trying to take over the formatting of all things online. They recently announced that Vista will also introduce a new digital imaging format that is supposedly better than .jpg. But, again, it is PC-specific.
What ever happened to JPEG2000?
Dawn, your post reminded me that it's been years since I've heard anything about the JPEG2000 (.jp2) format. Anyone out there heard anything about this? I wonder if Microsoft didn't buy the patent and is repackaging it...
on being paper free
I go fairly paper free, except for the drafts of essays I grade. How are you handling that step? Attached files and then you use track changes or some such thing?
bradley || bleckblog.org
grading and feedback--pdf
I'm completely paper free and have been for a few years. Most recently, I provide feedback either as an endnote or in-text using Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat's got quite a few nifty commenting functions. Moreover, I sometimes require them to submit final drafts in Acrobat (especially since I use OpenOffice instead of Word; sometimes there is some slightly formatting loss).
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Charlie | cyberdash
jpeg2000
karistolley, jpeg2000 is still available (and you can use it from Photoshop CS2). However, it never quite took off because only those who are very familiar with all of the different formats have known what it was, not all of the new people coming in to the imaging arena. In fact, this was recently brought up in a photography group I belong to because 2000 is a far superior format than regular jpg.
The new Microsoft format isn't jpg2000 but a whole new version of image formatting (unfortunately).
Paper free
I have been experimenting. Sometimes I copy the text of the submission into an e-mail and give a plain-text fisking (well, with a pedagogical rather than argumentative tone).
I often added comments and then sent the Word file back. (I experimented with doing that with Open Office, but ran into some problems.)
Depending on the assignment, I might just respond with an e-mail.
I also use Turnitin.com's peer-review feature, which is very efficient.
I have toyed with the idea of dictating responses to prewriting exercises and sending them as MP3s, but I'm worried I would edit the resulting voice files too much. (Still, if I I built a stockpile of standard comments, I might be able to mix a podcast... hmm.)
Dennis G. Jerz
Jerz's Literacy Weblog