Interesting piece! I don't have Helvetica in my WordPerfect. I use Georgia - it is easy to read.

I can't remember the last time I needed an updated resume ;) But I've never been attached to Times New Roman for any work at all. I seem to use Arial a lot, Garamond doesn't appeal to me. Trebuchet would be OK for my use, Helvetica doesn't appear in my Office 2010 Word program either, I really don't know if it was in previous versions.

I do admit to having used Comic Sans, who knew in bad taste ;) Not for business documents, but I've been in the habit of writing to some elderly family a few times a year, and I'm sure I've used Comic Sans, bumping the font size up to about 14 to make it easier on older eyes.

All my email replies are in dark blue Comic Sans, and I, too, sometimes use it in 14 pt for letters. It can't possibly be considered in bad taste used that way (and if it is, who cares?), but I agree it would be inappropriate for most resumes.

I looked up Helvetica. It's just a plain, blocky sans serif font. But I guess that's the point.

Tahoma is my favourite font. It's clean looking. My emails are limited to what I can use, Google docs have almost nothing to choose from.

I think the article has it backwards - using Times New Roman isn't like wearing sweatpants to an interview, it's like wearing an evening dress or a tuxedo to your kid's soccer game. I do agree that the more business-like and professional appearing fonts are the blocky sans serif ones. Too many resume preparers give too much attention to appearance and not enough to style and content. Unless applying for a job where visual creativity is needed and should be demonstrated (graphic design, advertising, etc), it's best to keep the visual style simple.

At some large businesses, incoming resumes are scanned and read by character recognition software to populate databases. The original appearance may not even be seen by some in reviewing a candidate's background.

I guess it depends on the age of the person reading the resume. There is a LOT of hate in the business world for Comic Sans. The designers of the font are bemused by its popularity too. It was supposed to be for thought bubbles in comic strips, but people like it. The designers don't really like it for regular use. I cant count how many otherwise normal people I've heard ranting about how much they hate Comic Sans, as if the font had somehow wronged them. I think it's overblown, but agree it's way too casual for business. OTOH, the Millennials have different ideas of appropriate office appearance, too, so I hesitate to say what they'd like in a resume, other than digitized the way Snidely said.

When I was producing a catalog, my graphic designer started with about 220 "boring" (non-artistic) fonts. She combed through them all looking for flaws, especially in grouping and spacing, for legibility and scalability. She winnowed, and eliminated, and struck down those which just didn't cut it. Then she had a list of ten, then seven, then one. Times Roman won because it was the best designed, easiest to read, best in all sizes, font there was.

I posit that Times Roman is neither sweatpants nor evening clothes. It is, in fact, a classic navy blue suit. It may be something of a fuddy duddy but it's never inappropriate.

Fonts are in your programs. They're on your computer. Even online--when you see different fonts on websites, they're interpreted by your browser to the closest thing it sees in your computer, or else they're pictures, rather than text.

There are many font banks out there where you can get any font you want.

Palatino for headings, and Century Gothic for body.

That's funny about Comic Sans, Plllog. I agree it doesn't belong in business documents. I just remembered . . . when I worked at a newspaper the young woman who typed obituaries and birth announcements used to type them in Comic Sans, and when she was done she'd change the font to whatever we were using at the time in the system. She told me she did that because "I like to look at it."

Years ago I liked Papyrus for my letterhead (again, not for business) until I started seeing it all over the place.

I do like Century Gothic. The Houzz font is similar in ways.

I use Arial or Times New Roman, and depending on the readership, I'll sometimes use the sans serif version for clarity and for better scan results by character recognition programs.

I use Arial much of the time in my drafting program because the numerals retain readibility better with this font when a drawing is scaled up or down. I also use the "True Fonts" versions for scalability.

Generally, serif fonts read better in print, but due to the limitations of screen draws and some printers, sans serifs can be clearer and cleaner for digital use.

Something easy to read. I'm not sure it matters these days since so many places require it to be entered using their system? I do use Garamond for my emails if that counts.

:)

I use Bookman Old Style for my emails (blue Comic Sans just for replies). But all this talk about fonts (love 'em!) is seductive . . . maybe it's time for a change.

It doesn't matter what font you compose your e-mails to me in. They all display in black Courier. Reading e-mail is a lot faster if you don't allow HTML, and my ISP strips off any images that aren't on the secure system anyway. :)

I get a lot of emails that arrive in 14 pt Georgia without HTML enabled. Why is that faster to read? I've never been aware that it is. No one I know puts emoticons in their email, so that's not an issue. If I want to reply in another font (which I usually do), I enable the HTML.

It's not the font that makes it faster to read, really, it's that it's in text mode. The Courier is easy to read because it doesn't use proportional spacing, has clear serifs and draws well, which also makes it fast to read, but the main deal is that without HTML and images, it just draws a lot faster.

My point in mentioning it, however, was to point out that it's local settings that determine how your message will be seen, not what you see on your side. If the reading program doesn't find Georgia installed on the local system, it'll look either for the next font by alphabet or, if a family is specified, the first on on the list that it finds installed will come up.

Interesting, P--thanks!

" ... resume ... ", what's that? I've been retired for close to twenty years!

I think that it's Calibri that I've used lately.

I think that I tried the same message in Courier a while ago and it took a lot more space. Sometimes I like to get quite a lot of text on a page.

ole joyfuelled