Fonts & Templates

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I'll begin by saying that none of this matters, but it matters to me.

This week, seeking distraction, I opened Google Docs and Microsoft Word and worked on the fonts and styles in my standard templates.

I'll bet you're real excited to keep reading.

Standard templates are the blank document into which one types. Long ago, I decided on page margins (half-inch top and bottom, one-inch side to side) and a font combination (Playfair Display title and headings, Open Sans body text). In this time at home, lacking enough to do, I got to feeling it was time for a new look in Google Docs. Having been switched to Word at work (sigh), I needed a template there too.

This how I keep from checking headlines and watching news briefings.

I played with Segoe UI, Calibri, and others, but returned to Open Sans. I changed sizes, weights, and line spacing. Eventually, I settled on a template for Google and something similar for Word (described below for geeks and freaks). It's the first time I've changed my template in years.

This reminds me of the lined paper I designed years ago and printed at the school system's expense on used sheets of copy paper. This is the paper I use for Morning Pages. I printed maybe a thousand sheets of it prior to leaving the school.

The design of those sheets began simply, but I refined it over years of small changes: I switched from twenty-five to thirty-one lines, added spaces for the date and page number, switched to dotted lines, shrunk the right margin, and added ghostly line numbers. Eventually, it became the page I use today, a page I love using and which, if I were a rich man, I'd have bound into books.

Creating a new template isn't necessary, but the act of tinkering and refining is a good use of _my_time so long as I don't go overboard. The template is a tool of my craft and I'm happy with what I've created and with knowing that I will refine them, maybe today, certainly down the road. Good tools are worthwhile and refining a good tool is a delight.

But when I want to really write I avoid Google Docs and Word in favor of Writer, a minimal, distraction-free editor with almost no control over fonts or templates. I'm drafting and revising this in Writer because I'm trying to write, not present. I've formatted the blog for presentation and can concentrate now on writing and revising.

Font fiddling and template tweaking matters to me because presentation of craft matters. A good template is a good tool but has nothing to do with the craft of writing. Knowing to keep creation and presentation separate, now there's something that matters.

Template Details For Geeks And Freaks

Google Docs

  • Title: Baskerville 30 pt, dark blue
  • Subtite/Author-Date: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark grey
  • Heading 1: Open Sans Light, 24 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 2: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 3: Open Sans Light, 14 pt, dark blue
  • Body Text: Open Sans, 11 pt, black

Word (Slightly larger, no complementary title font)

  • Title: Open Sans Light 38 pt, dark blue
  • Subtite/Author-Date: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark grey
  • Heading 1: Open Sans Light, 26 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 2: Open Sans Light, 22 pt, dark blue
  • Heading 3: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark blue
  • Body Text: Open Sans, 11 pt, black

If you've read this far, you're a geek.
If you try these in Google Docs and/or Word, you're my kind of freak.