What your essay font says about your personality

Well done on getting all those essays in on time. Bet you’re feeling pretty glad that all those deadlines and sleepless nights are behind you for the time being, right? Well you shouldn’t.

 

It doesn’t matter if you actually read the course material, it doesn’t matter if you got your Dad to proof it, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a bibliography longer than the entire extended edition of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

If your essay is in a stupid font, then you’re lecturer is going to hate it. And what’s more, they’re going to judge you for using that font. And they’re probably going to think you’re a twat.

Times New Roman

If you type your essays in Times New Roman, then all you’re saying is that you’ve never really taken a chance on anything. “If it worked in 1996, then it’ll work today,” the Romans cry. Sound logic, but when did you become such a bland little Hobbit?

Times New Roman is the Vanilla extract, the gouda cheese, the English Breakfast, the Honda-driving Uni-Qlo shopper of fonts. You’re trying so hard to fit in that you risk becoming completely invisible.

Legibility: 10

Attention-Grabbing Factor: 2

Popularity: 5

Corresponding Sex Position: Missionary

Calibri

When Microsoft Word made Calibri its default font in 2007, it was to fans of this typeface what 2013 was to fans of Arrested Development. Suddenly their beloved indie font that no one knew about besides them rocketed into the mainstream. Suddenly, everyone was talking about it. Gone was your feeling of superiority and your smug assurance that your way was the best way.

Calibri hipsters are forever embittered that the popular conscience caught up with them, and will remind you at every turn that they were smashing out their A-Level papers in Calbiri before it was cool.

Legibility: 8

Attention-Grabbing Factor: 6

Popularity: 10

Corresponding Sex Position: Doggy

Arial

Anyone who types using Arial is untrustworthy. It has the jet-black heart and calculated curves of apex predator, while maintaining that boring, mechanical appeal which makes the reader feel not as though they are digesting a thoughtful intellectual thesis, but rather watching the steady click-clack of that Newton’s Cradle this office-psychopath of a font definitely keeps on its desk.

This is the front used by Christian Grey, George Osborne and The Terminator. Always slightly too small, and always slightly too thin, avoid association with this font if you don’t want your tutor to assume that you spend your weekends torturing small animals.

Legibility: 4

Attention-Grabbing Factor: 4

Popularity: 4

Corresponding Sexual Position: Piledriver

Baskerville

Oh my, look how edgy you are. You give all your assignments artistic borders and caligraphic cover letters, too. If you’re a History Student, you write about genocides. If you’re an English Student, you write about the Gothic. If you’re a philosophy student, you write about nihilism. And if you’re a politics student then you also write about genocides.

You need your tutors to know how deep you are buried in the dark and grimy detail of the topic. You need them to know that you are made for this subject – and this subject is dark. If any font wore eyeliner, it’d be this one. For this font, it wasn’t just a phase. This font kept its emo fringe after 2004, just so that nothing could distract from gazing at its own navel and its favourite film is Nosferatu. Get a grip, Baskerville.

Legibility: 6

Attention-Grabbing Factor: 10

Popularity: 2

Corresponding Sex Position: Circle-Jerk

Comic Sans

We’re not at primary school any more, mate. Type like an adult. Yes, with all ten fingers and everything. Comic Sans is a font that even those kids at nursery who eat their Play-Doh find a little patronising. Your tutor is probably isn’t going to love you for using it.

Legibility: 3

Attention-Grabbing Factor: 9

Popularity: 1

Corresponding Sex Position: Perpetual, incurable virginity

Windings

You are a godless lunatic. Why would you attempt this? What point are you even trying to make? Is there any point asking you? Or is my answer just going to be ‘two sperms and a lightening bolt’? There is no help for you. You are the student who every tutor dreads. Go study Ecopoetics, you madman.

 

Legibility: N/A

Attention Grabbing Factor: N/A

Popularity: 0

Corresponding Sex Position: Wheelbarrow