Typeface

Dedicated to Andy, though he knows all this anyway.

Serifs v sans serif, flourishes versus block print as I call it.  Though each has its uses, I agree about the egregious Helvetica.

You're currently reading this in Arial, an all round sans and why in a few moments.  The header and headings are in a serif, it used to be my fave Bookman Old Style ... there was purpose in this, but we can't get it now as a standard offering.

BOS had the clarity of a sans, was good for high info purposes but also had some flourishes to give a slight literary feel to it, plus it's a broad font, which I like ... slower paced, not in a hurry to cram data in, a friendly font.

My long book is in Georgia [serif], my novellas and shorts are in Libre Baskerville [also serif].  Serifs are literary or serious fonts, there's an old world elegance to them, the downside being that some of the popular ones are damned hard reading.

They really could not be used for ONO which needed a readable 'means business', 'shifts masses of information gently' style, plus my eyes now need a large, clear font to see [age].

The fiction and semi fiction

Rule of thumb is that a novelette is about 7500 to 19,000 words, a short story less, a novella is held to be 17,500 to 50,000 words, a novel beyond that and saga beyond that again.

The three parts of the Masquerade trilogy, combined, come to a tad over 500,000 words, or around 1500 pages, a saga.  And still there are typos needing fixing.

I'm working, today, on my novella, the one and only from me, turning a duology of novels into a trilogy of novellas as they were originally intended to be.  There's a certain amount of rewriting going on at beginnings and endings of chapters.  It will probably come out to 34,000 words apiece = 102,000 words all up.  The style is more novel than novella, though quite fast paced.