Année : 2004

What makes a good day job for screenwriters and writers,

according to John August, the screenwriter of Big Fish (which I saw last week and, to my own surprise, very much enjoyed).

August’s web site is a great ressource for people who want to write for movies. If only all screenwriters were as generous as he is and understood the Web as well as he does… It would be great if he added blogging to his site, even though his current structure is rather close to blogging.

For those of you interested in the screenwriting and directing process, the Big Fish web site offers a very DVD like feature where you can follow one of the scenes from the movie from script to screen.

The subject of the day job makes me realize: for a little over two years now, I haven’t had to keep one of those day jobs to be able to do what I really wanted to do. Being able to make a living from writing – even though a lot of this writing does not qualify as personal projects – is quite a blessing and something I doubted I would ever be able to achieve. I keep my fingers crossed that I won’t have to give it up to sell donuts, or something like that.

And to say that I felt a little behind on all that typeface stuff.

In a sign that no matter is too small to affect international diplomacy, the US State Department has issued an edict banning its longtime standard typeface from all official correspondence and replacing it with a « more modern » font.

In an internal memorandum distributed on Wednesday, the department declared « Courier New 12 » – the font and size decreed for US diplomatic documents for years – to be obsolete and unacceptable after February 1.

« In response to many requests and with a view to making our written work easier to read, we are moving to a new standard font: ‘Times New Roman 14’, » said the memorandum.

The new font « takes up almost exactly the same area on the page as Courier New 12, while offering a crisper, cleaner, more modern look, » it said, adding that after February 1 « only Times New Roman 14 will be accepted. »

From ABC News Online.

I hope that the screenwriting world will be next to abandon Courier (but not for Times, please!).

Thanks to Vieux Bandit for the link.

Since you were so useful in answering my question about which font to use in a professional document (in a creative field), here’s another issue I’m dealing with: I heard that fully-justified text might be out of style and can make for bad page layout. What’s your take on this debate?

This article claims that there is no right or wrong when it comes to page layout and that it all depends on the type of document. The technical and marketing writer in my house believes that full-justification creates too much white space through the lines and makes the text hard to read.

I should precise that the document I’m working on will be published with MS Word and printed (vs read on a computer screen). Also, the 50 pages guideline we received from the tv broadcaster – whose call for entries we are answering – is fully-justified, and I believe that this is what my boss will want to go for as well. Most people think fully-justified looks more pro. This guy’s take on the issue is interesting:

In other words, the reason that some people, including your boss, prefer full-justification has little to do with aesthetics. In most cases, the reason for the preference is technical: until the emergence of the personal computer, any attempt at full justification was next to impossible for the average person. As a result, when word processors made full justification a possibility, many people jumped at the chance to use it on the grounds that it looked more sophisticated.

Among typographers, however, the general consensus is that, with a tool like MS Word, you’re better off with left-justified text. Do a search, and you should have no problem finding dozens of expert opinions to back up this contention.

Still, I’m curious to know if there’s a trend about this right now in the oh so hip world of desktop publishing.