A Stolen Font and a Stolen Voice

A small and large frustration occurred today in my co-worker's calm usurpation of my font. This sounds rather petty, but I don't suppose one can truly appreciate the individuality or prettiness of a font well-chosen until one has taken a printing class, as I had the joy of doing. The class promised to make us view the world in a different way and, unlike so many college classes who say they'll change who you are, this class truly delivered. I do see things differently. It's like an initiation into this special group of people who notice serifs and the differences between the slant of an "e." Anyway, I now take fonts extremely seriously and thought very carefully before choosing one for my work e-mail. I chose Georgia, a relatively new typeface designed for clarity on the computer screen while maintaining the lovely look of something from an earlier age. I really love Georgia and, to my delight, received a few compliments on my font choice from recipients of my work e-mails. There were others in the little font society and I got to communicate with them! They recognized the importance of the font and the choice. "It's like a different voice," one commented. Exactly as I felt.

One of the people to compliment my font choice was my co-worker, E. She is a genuinely nice person who notices the little things and never seems to have a negative or frazzled outlook (unless anyone brings up Sarah Palin, of course, but that sort of thing can be excused). Whereas S manages to up the stress level with her involvement in anything, E brings it all down a notch to calmness and is generally a pleasant person. Thus, I was quite pleased when she complimented the font. She rose in my estimation by showing off, most basically, her ability to notice the tiny details of a font and, more importantly, her similar taste to mine in terms of a nice font. "It's so pretty I kind of want to use it as my own!" she joked and we all laughed.

Fast forward a week to today when I received a short, ordinary e-mail from her. It was just asking me to enter some information in the database in the most friendly, polite terms as she always did. But it was all in Georgia. It was jarring. I was momentarily confused. It was like hearing your own voice on a recording somewhere unexpected or suddenly coming around a corner to face a mirror, and yourself. It took me a moment to realize what had happened: font theft! E-mail identity theft! Theft of voice! I was, needless to say, peeved.

But how to explain this to someone who is genuinely and simply practicing the oldest form of flattery in the book: imitation? She really did just think it was very nice and wanted something equally nice. How can one argue against that? The answer is that you can't and I just have to let it go, but it still rankles a little.