First, I changed the default font back to 12-point Times New Roman. But then I came across this font advisory for NSF applicants. It specifies four appropriate fonts of size 10 or larger. None of these are Times New Roman. The figure below shows the default Word 2007 font, the old Times New Roman, and the 4 NSF approved Fonts.
I then searched NIH's criteria (only Arial and Helvetica permitted... yuck). I couldn't find a font specification for NIJ. (These being the three agencies I'm mostly likely to apply to, I didn't search further).
Then I looked at some of the journals I write for. Many request Times New Roman. Ugh.
I've decided to set my default as Georgia (see the figure above). It seems to be the most visually striking, while not being distracting. We'll see how long that lasts.
My next time-frittering project will be to set up a word document template for my students to ensure that their papers are formatted correctly.
