Defamiliarizing the DefaultTypography in the Composition Classroom Ashley M. Watson Watson | 1 am not a huge fan of Comic Sans. Not a lot of people are. In the fall of 1999, Holly Sliger, a design student at the Herron School of Art and Design of Indianapolis, began the Ban Comic Sans Movement. In a Wall Street Journal article, Sliger reflects on a museum gallery job that requested the typeface. She I says, “It was like hell for me. It was everywhere, like an epidemic” (Steel, “Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will”). A documentary film by Gary Hustwit explored another popular typeface in which the movie is named, Helvetica. The documentary recreates the ongoing conflict between modernist typographers that love Helvetica’s ability to unify people, and the postmodern typographers that believe its quotidian nature robs the public of their individual expression. Negative responses to Helvetica and Comic Sans stem from their popularity and their presence in our everyday backdrops. In this essay, I turn the focus to a typeface popular in the public sphere—but also in the academic—Times New Roman. Times New Roman differs from Helvetica and Comics Sans in the fact that it serves as a default in software programs and is also required for most academic papers. In “The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones,” Cynthia Selfe and Richard Selfe urge instructors to “adopt a more critical and reflective approach to their use of computers,” in order to realize the “effects of domination and colonialism associated with computer use” (482). These “effects of domination and colonialism” should extend to the discussion of default typefaces. With the growing integration of technology in writing classrooms, students are coming into contact with an increased number of typographic choices. Unfortunately, composition instructors and students blindly follow academic requirements or limited software type choices. Although textbooks and instructors focus on the personality and readability of type, the historic and ongoing debates over typeface ownership remains esoteric knowledge. Students continually represent their work in the ubiquitous Times New Roman: a type required in most classrooms, and until recently, the default on Microsoft Word. But, how often do we examine the typeface we require our students to use? How often do we question Times New Roman’s authority? I use the word defamiliarize, because students and instructors are well aware of the presence of Times New Roman, but we have never questioned why it is so ubiquitous. Times New Roman was created for the purpose of containing a text, rather than distracting the reader with out-of-the-ordinary typographic features. Its universality enhanced its familiarity, and thus its invisibility. In the essay I hope to ask what Times New Roman is, who created it, why it was created, and why it is the default. Further, I hope to explore what these answers mean to the field of composition, especially after Times New Roman’s recent replacement by Calibri as the Microsoft default. I will look at John Trimbur’s “Delivering the Message: Typography and the Materiality of Writing” from Carolyn Handa’s collection Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World (2004). The piece argues against the process movement’s neglect of the modes of production and circulation in writing, which took away focus from the material and visual content of writing. The essay serves as an essential proponent for typography in the composition classroom, using typography as a location to rematerialize and revisualize writing. Using Trimbur as support, I will next explore how typography is currently discussed in the composition classroom using popular textbooks and handbooks. After arguing for types’ illumination, I will next use prominent theories and histories to illuminate typography in the composition classroom. I will dissect Times New Roman, looking at its beginning as the typeface of the British newspaper, The Times, to its recent replacement by Calibri as the Microsoft default. Lastly, I will reenter the composition classroom analyzing Times New Roman in a pedagogical context. Essentially, I argue the following: 1. no typeface is invisible when its narrativity, origins, and intended purposes are revealed Watson | 2 2. defamiliarizing typefaces, especially ubiquitous typefaces such as Times New Roman, can give students more power over the production of their compositions 3. successful illumination of typography in the classroom will only happen after pedagogical resources are improved I am not hoping to add another step to the writing process, or change the universal requirement of Times New Roman. Rather, I hope to explore a historic moment—a change of a default. Such a change does affect the composition classroom, since we have come to rely on Times New Roman as our own default. Calibri was created for a pleasurable and easy on-screen reading experience. Microsoft decided to redefine its norm, which will in turn affect an already established norm, Times New Roman. While Times New Roman’s typographic kingship is being challenged by a sans-serifed1 newcomer, we should take the time to explore what this tells us about typography as a location of power. Type in the Classroom | Trimbur, Textbooks, and Technology With the growing pertinence of visual rhetoric in composition, typography exploration is opportune and essential. In the early twenty-first century, sessions on visual rhetoric and new media topics appeared throughout the program of the Conference on College Composition and Communication: “Composition teachers are thinking about the visual, considering theories historicizing the separation of words and images, and understanding the place of classical rhetoric, design studies, and cultural studies in our pedagogy” (Handa 2). Though strides have been made in incorporating visual rhetoric into composition, there is still much work to be done. In 2004, Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World served as a theoretical “launching pad” for future teaching and researching practices of visual rhetoric. In Visual Rhetoric’s introduction, Handa argues that students are “technologically sophisticated yet rhetorically illiterate” (3). While students understand that a variety of visual and textual elements make- up a website, they may not understand or consider the rhetorical questions needed to create a website. Instructors in return, need to adapt to emerging technologies. By becoming users of technology and implementing technologies into our own scholarship, we can become better teachers of it. Further, scholars such as Cynthia Selfe and Richard Selfe argue that instructors should also rhetorically analyze the technology present in our own classrooms. While visual rhetoric invites instructors and students to analyze the world around them, it also invites analysis of the spaces we compose in. In “The Politics of Interface,” Selfe and Selfe view computer interfaces as “cultural maps of computer systems,” maps which are designed with a certain set of historical and social values (485). Selfe and Selfe explore varieties of interface as map, but I want to look specifically at interfaces as maps of capitalism and class privilege. Computers often map the virtual world as a desktop (manila folders, files, documents, telephones, etc.), which is associated with “corporate culture and values of professionalism” (486). These maps of capitalism and class privilege also include spaces which are increasingly legislated and controlled (487). Students continue to rely on library systems and information databases, which are becoming more expensive, and thus aligned with class privilege and capitalism (488). 1 Sans-serif typefaces are those without “the feet” at the end of the strokes. For example, Times New Roman (notice the horizontal lines at the end of the strokes) is a serif typeface and Arial is a sans-serif typeface. Watson | 3 Selfe and Selfe write: “Currently, most teachers of composition studies at the collegiate level are educated to deal with technology not as critics but as users” (496). Becoming critics of computer interfaces allows scholars to: acquire the intellectual habits of reflecting on and discussing the cultural and ideological characteristics of technology—and the implications of these characteristics—in educational contexts. With such a realization, we maintain, English composition teachers can begin to exert an increasingly active influence on the cultural project of technology design. (484) Selfe and Selfe essentially argue for an increased understanding of computer interfaces in education and interface design so that humanist scholars can voice their perspectives in a location dominated by computer scientists (498). I hope to further critique the interface, looking specifically at typography, something not mentioned in the article. Critiquing, and not just using, typography will give both instructors and students power over the visuality of their interfaces and their public and academic writing. John Trimbur’s “Delivering the Message: Typography and the Materiality of Writing” argues for the re-emergence of typography as an effective tool in the production and circulation of student writing. His chapter serves as a typographic, theoretical launching pad in Handa’s call for new practices of composition teaching and research in visual rhetoric. Trimbur and Typography In “Delivering the Message: Typography and the Materiality of Writing,” John Trimbur argues that major components