Many writers prefer to draft their work using a typeface that’s a bit more austere than what they’ll use in the final product (consider typewriters). It helps to create a mental divide between what the text is and what stage it’s at in the writing process. I’ve often used Consolas for this purpose (in BBEdit, naturally), but I think I’ve found a replacement.

Whilst writing our book, I saw a new typeface created by Ro Hernández called Pigeonette, made for writing. It’s not quite monospaced, but definitely has some of that feeling to it. It is undoubtedly a drafting typeface, with one spectacular feature: type three or more underscores (_) and it produces a placeholder squiggle. There’s unfortunately no bold italic variant, but I think the designer may be convinced to add one, just to make it more versatile.

Pigeonette is not yet finished. In fact it’s only a 0.1 version with limited character support, no kerning and no hinting. Yet. It’s being released through Future Fonts, which allows designers to sell their in-progress work at a discounted rate. At $60 (US), I’d say Pigeonette is a phenomenal deal.