Lars Eighner's Homepage Writers' Workshop Glossary: N

N

`noir /'nWAR/ noun or adjective: (genre) A highly stylized mystery genre usually involving a hardboiled (very cynical, disillusioned, and plain spoken) private detective, who often is more deeply principled than he would care to appear. Life is cheap in noir novels, but so is the detective who may be financially strapped and who must accept any case that appears likely to pay anything. Although both the detective and the criminals are likely to shoot someone in cold blood and then finish their sandwich or their drink, there is usually much more shadowy menacing than graphic violence. The detective is usually battling some internal demon, some horrible accident, romantic disappointment, or alcoholism, although the precise nature of this internal struggle may or may not be explored explicitly. Noir features a lot of snappy patter with pointed, often sarcastic, exchanges featuring many expressions from criminal and lowlife patois, and the same sort of language is common in the first-person narration. Many of the settings are cheap offices, sleazy dives, and flop houses. Often a romantic interest tempts the detective to believe in love again, but these relationships are always doomed from the start. Noir derives it's name from film noir of which the principal example is The Maltese Falcon, but this territory was explored extensively in novels before the films existed.
,non·pro`portional /,nAnpR'poUrS@nl-/ adjective: (printing) of a font, having the quality that letters are equally spaced on the line. In nonproportional fonts the following are lines are the same length:
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Nonproportional fonts are used by most typewriters and computer displays in text mode. Nonproportional fonts facilitate handwritten corrections and certain kinds of estimates of the space a work will require once it is set in type. For this reason, nonproportional fonts are often preferred for manuscripts. : MONOSPACE, FIXED-WIDTH. Compare: proportional