[Anastasia]

I have no idea why Courier, let alone the worse Times New Roman got to be industry standard. Both are a devil to read if you have the slightest sight problems, and evil for dyslexics (even mild dyslexics like myself). I think some publishers are living in the dark ages!

I use Comic Sans for all my university work, as I was advised to by a disabilities officer. I could submit it in anything my tutor required, of course, due to the wonders of MS Word but so far, all the comments I've had have been "Wow, what's that font? It's really easy to read!"

Of course, these days everything is submitted as an MS Word attachment anyway, so I think it's going to be less and less important what font you actually write in. But it would probably be a great idea to find out what your publisher requires before submitting work.

Thanks for this amusing post - it tells a lot of truth, I'm sure. I heard an even funnier "What not to do" however - a guy who stapled a photograph of himself and the map reference to his house, on the front of a manuscript!