In Search of the Perfect Writing Font via ia.net

A well-articulated set of arguments for why the folks at IA ship their plain text editor with only a monospaced font:

In contrast to proportional fonts that communicate “this is almost done” monospace fonts suggest “this text is work in progress.” It is the more honest typographic choice for a text that is not ready to publish...The typographic rawness of a monospace font tells the writer: “This is not about how it looks, but what it says. Say what you mean and worry about the style later.” Proportional fonts suggest “This is as good as done and stand in an intimidating contrast to a raw draft.”

I wonder if that’s why there’s so many bugs in software: we’re subconsciously believing it’s always a work in progress? Well, the folks at IA address the programmers and monospaced fonts later:

Programmers use monospaced fonts for their indentation and because it allows them to spot typos. In a perfectly regular horizontal and vertical raster, letters and words become easily discernible

But is there a balance between a proportional font and a monospaced one?

This year, again, we set out exploring our own writing font. We started from scratch, moved from proportional to monospace to three spaces and ended up with duospace...Progressively, we came to realize that the right question is how to make a proportional font look like a monospace, but how many exceptions you allow until you lose the benefits of a sturdy monospace.

And here’s the why behind exploring duospace:

The advantage over proportional fonts is that you keep all benefits of the monospace: the draft like look, the discernability of words and letters, and the right pace for writing. Meanwhile, you eliminate the downside stemming from mechanical restrictions that do not apply to screen fonts.