Renee Emerson

I saw an interesting twitter discussion the other day about what font to use when submitting writing to journals/presses. In my undergrad classes, the poet professor I most admire would say Times New Roman was really the only professional font to use, if you want to be taken seriously (which of course my 19 year old self did!).

There’s some common sense here–Comic Sans is obviously wrong, as is Typewriter font. I feel like the font should not distract from the actual writing (and those two examples do).

The font in question in the discussion was Garamond, which is the font most commonly used for published books–the idea being that if you submit your poems in Garamond, they LOOK like they should be published.

Perhaps there is some psychological trickery behind this; however, I would sincerely hope that a journal is not choosing its poems on font alone, and that a truly wretched poem would not make it in were it to be submitted in gold-leaf with a $35 submission fee attached.

Or, on the flipside, a truly good poem would not be rejected were it to be hand-written on a napkin?

Professionalism is important for a writer; it shows that you take your work seriously. However, I think that maybe there is a little more wiggle-room to what looks “professional” than Only TNR font.

Personally, I don’t usually spend a lot of time looking at different fonts, since I’m a more analytical vs. “sensing” type person. It just doesn’t make a difference to me–hopefully it doesn’t to editors either!