What's your type?

You are reading this story in a typeface called Slimbach Narrow. Or, if you're online, it's in an Arial font.

Did you notice?

Do you care?

Many people don't. They go through their daily lives – sending e-mails, writing résumés, composing Word documents, crafting PowerPoint presentations – oblivious to the multitude of typefaces at their disposal.

Take New York Times best-selling mystery author John Lescroart, who lives in Davis.

"I just use my default font," Lescroart says. "I don't even know what it is. Hold on. I can tell you in about 10 seconds …"

As we wait for Lescroart's answer, let's ponder the sudden and curious ascension of typefaces (also labeled "fonts" in most computer programs) for many others. It's a phenomenon in the pop-culture world, really, that goes hand-in-mouse with digital technology.

A new documentary, "Helvetica," exploring the appeal of that most utilitarian of typefaces, is garnering good reviews. Online sites where you can buy – no exaggeration – more than 58,000 fonts have proliferated, as has the griping by typography traditionalists. One art snob in Indiana has even started an online movement trying to ban the goofy typeface Comic Sans.

And yes, academics have weighed in, too. Researchers at Wichita State University in Kansas have published a series of studies detailing what your font of choice says about you – sort of a Rorschach test for the Web 2.0 set.

But, anyway, back to Lescroart …

"OK," he says, "I'm currently typing in Times New Roman 12."

Then, he adds, almost apologetically: "I don't take advantage of what's out there."

Other people, however, do. And they see typefaces as extensions of their personalities.

"Typefaces are the clothes words wear, and just as we make judgments about people by the clothes they wear, so we make judgments about the information we're reading by the typefaces," typography analyst Caroline Archer told BBC radio recently.

For those who have, like, a life, here's a quick primer on typefaces: They are divided into two main groups – serif and sans serif. Serifs, simply, are letters with tiny horizontal lines added to the top and bottom of letters. Sans serifs, therefore, eschew such appendages. Of course, designers have manipulated type into all sorts of tricked-out forms.

But do fonts really make the man or woman?

"The cliché in my business," says Peter Norris, creative director for Sacramento advertising agency Runyon Saltzman Einhorn, "is that type talks. Think of it as your voice. A good company will be very consistent with its voice, whatever it's trying to convey. Some fonts are heavy and yell at you. Others are strong silent types."

Try this out as a new pickup line: Hey, babe, I'm a Rockwell Xbold. Are you my type?

OK, we digress.

Back to Sacramento Web developer Cody McKibben, pecking away on his laptop recently at the Naked Lounge cafe in midtown Sacramento – he says he's conscious of how others will interpret a typeface. So he chooses carefully. It's akin, he says, to a first impression in the online world.

"When I'm e-mailing someone I don't know well, I'll stick with serif types, but I'll make sure to attach a signature in either Garamond or Georgia, which is much cleaner than Times New Roman," McKibben says. "When I'm doing a blog, I'll go with a sans serif like Verdana.

"I know some people choose fonts to make statements."

Never is that more true than with teenagers, for whom texting and e-mailing is a primary form of communication.

Caroline Loomis, a junior high school computer arts teacher in Davis, says she tries mightily to get her students to go easy on the wacky fonts. One popular choice for kids, she says, is Blackletter686 BT.

"(It's a) very fancy, Old English kind of calligraphic font," Loomis says. "It's a headline font totally unsuited to paragraph text."

In other words: Hard to read.

Loomis, herself, has hundreds of fonts at her disposal, but admits remaining a typeface conservative.

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Sam McManis, (916) 321-1145. Read his blog postings at www.sacbee.com/21q.