text size = too big

Today I was on my parents' computer, reading a paper I wrote, and just felt like something was wrong with it. I got to this passage:

"What, though, is reader-response criticism? The question requires no short answer. Reader-response criticism is the academic explanation of what we do every time we take up a book for leisure reading: it is an investigation of what actually happens¾not what might, ought to, or could occur in a reader. Reader-response is a loose affiliation of theorists around one key belief¾'The reader is a major player in the making of a text.'"

If you didn't read that [and I wouldn't blame you], it was a brief introduction to reader-response theory criticism. I honestly think it's a well-composed paragraph. I use just the right number of big words to make it look smart, and just enough small ones to make it look friendly. Smart and friendly. Yay!


But it looked dumb and silly to me when I was reading it. Now, on my [now broken] laptop, the text looked just fine. So I knew it wasn't the text itself. I checked my parents' word processor settings, and I noticed what it was:

My parents have the text magnification set to a ridiculous level. Read the paragraph again like this...

"What, though, is reader-response criticism? The question requires no short answer. Reader-response criticism is the academic explanation of what we do every time we take up a book for leisure reading: it is an investigation of what actually happens, and not what might, ought to, or could occur in a reader. Reader-response is a loose affiliation of theorists around one key belief: 'The reader is a major player in the making of a text.'"

The point being, the bigger the text size, the more stupid whatever you have to say looks.

[consider and grow.]
-brian