This!
But maybe the equivalent of all Arial/Sans or all Times New Roman/Serif, which is a little easier to read than monospace.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Any author thinking this way should bite the bullet and assume that the entire book will be seen in Courier New Regular. Not even bold or italic; just typewriter, as it was back in the day when Raymond Chandler wrote books. Assume that; write your scenes, your dialogue, your beats, etc., under those circumstances and use your writing talent to ensure that the reader knows who is talking, and to whom.
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Though they might have used *bold*, _this_ or /this/ for italic to indicate to the typesetter. MS Word and LO Writer can still autoconvert those on imported files.
Typewriters can usually do underline and strike-through by use of the Backspace key. They are the reason for the stupid use of ' and " instead of ‘ ’ “ ” in unprofessionally produced computer texts because the 1930 teletype used a typewriter keyboard and the updated versions of those were computer terminals from the 1950s to 1970s. The IBM PC, DOS and its keyboard in 1980 was a backward step to CP/M and terminals of the mid 1970s.
I tested a bunch of epub apps lately. Over 50% people read on a tablet or phone. I was surprised how many either just used the fonts on the tablet, or their own bundled fonts and had NO option to use the Publisher Embedded font. I even contacted some of the developers.
“Oh, now I see what you mean, that's a lot of work. I don’t know when I’ll fix it.”
As an aside:
Ray Bradbury, Enid Blyton and Isaac Asimov wrote a lot on typewriters and would have been astounded at the idea of multiple fonts. I had to type my weekly report on a really old typewriter. I hated it. I did get a a nice portable one to have as an ornament in my library/writing room. It's easier than the one in my first job, but I'd rather use Edlin on MSDOS 2.11 than a typewriter. I used Wordstar and clones for over 10 years and would not go back. I only use a text editor for notes. Or the odd scene of a new story. Paragraph Styles in the wordprocessor map to classes in CSS. Generally inline changes do not. So technically the idea of different fonts per character would be a nightmare to write, edit and produce to an ebook. It's common when writing to change who says something in a 3 person or more group. The current system makes that easy.
Oddly the PDF proof for paper not so awkward. The OP suggested it for ebooks, but mostly the delivery/view will fail for more than 90% of readers as Amazon has 90% of the English language ebook market. It would work for paper, but it's ghastly to read.