Most ClarisWorks users realize that proportionally-spaced fonts (like Palatino or Times) produce more attractive output than their mono-spaced cousins (such as Monaco or Courier). That is because the designers of proportionally-spaced fonts adjust the space allocated to each letter to accommodate the different widths of the various letters. For example, proportionally-spaced fonts allocate less space for the letter "i" than the letter "m". By contrast, mono-spaced fonts allow the same space for each character. The designers of these typefaces often "squeeze" and "stretch" the horizontally to fill their allocated space. As a result, words like "mimic" and "medium" often look distorted in your documents.
However, allocating different widths to each character would make it difficult to use proportionally-spaced fonts in any document that includes columns of numbers. Fortunately, font designers recognize that numbers must line up in columns, so most professionally designed fonts include mono-spaced numbers. As a result, you can use almost any well-designed proportionally-spaced font in your ClarisWorks spreadsheets.