Coursemarker Guidelines

Font Choices

Periodically the question comes up about fonts to use for CMs. Feel free to play around and come up with thematic fonts on your CMs -- it'll add a nice touch.

The obvious criteria are:

• 1, I and J look different
• VV should not need a space to differentiate from W (but sometimes does)
• Wide stroke

Some people prefer, because they're easier to read:

• Serifed (tends to go with 1, I, and J being well differentiated)

Successful fonts that have been used are:

• Goudy Extra Bold
• OCR-A Extended
• Copperplate

Things that have worked OK but not great:

• New Century Schoolbook (strokes are too light, VV runs into W space)
• Helvetica (strokes again too light, no serifs make distinguishing some letters harder)
• Comic Sans (some characters came out funny, but I don't remember what)

Some fonts that give trouble:

• Gill Sans (1, I indistinguishable)
• Arial (ditto)
• Various weird titling fonts for various reasons

General Layout

Set the margins in your document small, and be prepared to fiddle with the paragraph/line spacing. The font size is "huge". A standard 8.5"x11" page is 612 points across and 792 points down. The exact font size to use varies substantially with the font, though. Something in the range of 300 points is a good starting place, and then you'll need to tweak.

Get as large as you can. Something most people don't realize is how large street signs really are.