Times Roman

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This is going to sound stupid, but why is Times Roman such a common publishing font? I mean, besides its obvious use in computer word processing, I've actually seen a great number of books and magazines published in Times. Of course, the majority I see are still some form of a modern Antiqua font, but I was wondering why Times has such popularity. By the way, why do you not see books published in monospace fonts like Courier?

Thanks so much!

- Vashna

There have been a number of studies over the years on font readability. You can find them on the net.

Anyway, the general result of most of them seems to be that Serifed Fonts, like Times New Roman are most readable on Paper.
Interestingly, Sans Serif fonts, like Arial and Verdana are most readable on screen.

Serifs are those little "tails" at the bottom of letters which join up to make invisible lines (and keep your eyes from slipping down the page).

the other important thing is spacing and kerning. Monospaced fonts, like Courier, in which every character occupies the same amount of space, are considered harder to read than fonts with different spacing for different letters (Try typing a line of Ws and a line of Is. If you font is monospaced, then the same number will fit across the page. If your font is not, then you can fit lots more I's.

Monspaced fonts are great for showing spaces and colons etc... because they leave big gaps. This makes them very useful when writing programs.

I've only ever read font readability studies conducted on the presence of serifs. Also, fonts like Verdana were specifically created with the intent of using them on screen. Times Roman was developed for an English newspaper 7 decades ago. Courier was a 1950s extrapolation of the original monospace font used in mechanical typewriters, developed for electric typewriters. Some form of Antiqua has been in use since the 15th century. Not to try and one up you at all! I did not mean that at all - you really helped shed some light because I never realized that people found spacing and kerning to be that much of a factor, except that monospaced fonts appear darker, etc. I always thought things in Courier actually had a clean and presentable appearance.

Ever hear of the old Blackletter fonts used in Germany?

Thanks again so much. I hope I don't seem arrogant at all.

Hi,

Not worried about one-upmanship.

I had to learn all the ins and outs of fonts as part of my applied science degree (during a subject that included desktop publishing). I suspect that things have changed quite a bit now with GenY and the improved typefaces on computers in any case.

A lot of the surveys about Serifs have been turned on their heads recently. You have to remember that the older generation never got exposure to printed sans serif fonts.

I rather liked the blackletter fonts but there's not much practical use for them unless you're making a horror movie and need title cards. Once at uni, I used it for a title at the top of each page of my essay. I thought it looked cool at the time but I later realized that it looked awful. I got into quite a bit of trouble over that.

I rarely use Times Roman, it's boring and plain. My favourite font is Comic Sans MS cos it's easy to read but looks nicer.

Ah... fonts... my favourite would be Palace Script:


I used to have an Adana hand printing press, and a bunch of moveable type fonts. I would go up to the City of London (somewhere thereabouts, anyway) to a foundry, to get them to forge me extra letters, typically for my Palace Script, when I needed them. If I recall correctly, it meant waiting around for half an hour on so, while they went off to make them. They would come back all nice and warm and shiny. I would also buy "pie" (Printing. A mass of type in confusion or mingled indiscriminately, such as results from the accidental breaking up of a form of type), for pennies, from various printing houses.

But interestingly the absolute Winner are not Time New Roman, but Garamond and Typeface based on the very early typefaces from Italy of the late 15th century namely Nicolas Jenson (here an original):

800 pixel wide image

The so-called Venetian 301 comes here very close and I prefer to use it in printouts:

http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/singles/b ... 1_demi_ot/

Last edited by Dussel on 06 Apr 2009, 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

There are plenty around and they changed over the centuries. Unfortunately the standard fonts do no provide enough letters for a corrent German Blackletter typeface. It starts with the two kinds of "s": The long and the wide form, and ends with a vast amount of ligatures, like st, tz, sch, ch, ff, fft, fi, ft, fu, etc. etc.

I therefore do not use any black letters on the computer.

---

You still need here a set of Antiqua Letters, because words in Latin and other languages are still ste in Antiqua - here an example:

1000x1649 399,125 byte image

Yes, I realize that Blackletter isn't exactly the most modern or useful of typefaces these days, but I always felt it was a bit of a shame that no publishing is done in German Fraktur any more. I have an old book published in German that's in Fraktur. Thanks so much for the response. Actually, gina, you bring up a good point since this whole topic was on my mind because I was tired of always handing in school assignments in Times New Roman. Wow, that Palace Script is attractive...and you hand printed that? Incredible! Isn't Garamond also often used to print books? What I meant by some form of Antiqua was like Palatino/Book Antiqua publishing fonts.

I really hope, once more, that this has not been mean under any fashion at all. Really.

I remember at one point there was this obsession with Verdana, being so readable on screen, and I got hooked. Well, even if it didn't replace everything, I find it quite useful.

I miss the Chicago font, which was the default on early Macs.

I actually really like Chicago too, as well as Geneva from Macs. Fixedsys, similar to Chicago, I found attractive too for user interfaces and the like.

Its the easiest to read. Especially for all the people out there who are heard of seeing or can't read cursive.

You mean Times Roman?

I am a typographically-sensitive person (but not hyper-sensitive as people without taste insist ). As such, I found some of the posts in this thread so upsetting that I just had to register an account and respond.

Actually, Times isn't all that popular in publishing in general. However, to most people all mainstream serif typefaces look like Times New Roman -- the serif people are most familiar with thanks to Microsoft. Strictly speaking, "Times Roman" and "Times New Roman" are distinct typefaces, the former having been developed by Monotype, and the latter by Linotype. As I understand it, Times New Roman that is shipped with Windows is Linotype's Times New Roman tweaked to look better on raster displays. There are many other typefaces considered to be in the "Times familiy" (i.e. inspired by Monotype's Times).


This is wrong. In fact, Times is among the least readable mainstream typefaces. Let me explain.

The Times typeface was developed for use in The (London) Times newspaper. It was designed to conserve space and give the printed a darker appearance (what is known as a typeface's "color"). The idea was that consumers tend to buy newspapers that are packed with information. Times's compactness allowed more text per square inch, and its dark "color" also made it look as if The Times newspaper had more information per sheet than the competitors.

The Times typeface became popular because it made The Times newspaper sell better. Consequently, popularity of The Times newspaper pushed other newspapers to adapt Times-like typefaces. Since newspapers are (or used to be) the most accessible form of printed text, the Times became everybody's most familiar typeface, even though few people knew its name before the advent of Windows. Microsoft made Times New Roman the default serif, making it even more universally used and recognized. Finally, often Times New Roman can be legally used for free.

The Times and its derivatives are the least readable among the widely-used serifs because readability was compromised for the sake of compactness. Nevertheless, Times is adequate for newspapers because people spend relatively little time on a newspaper, reading only a few articles of interest (narrow columns help also). Reading a book or a large document typeset with Times will cause exhaustion, headache and ocular bleeding.

Generally, most readable typefaces are considered to include: Caslon, Garamond and Jenson. Of course, readability is affected by many factors besides the typeface.

Where interestingly Garamond and Jenson are very old typefaces of the late 15th and early 16th century. Especially Jenson has still "kind of touch" from the handwritten Carolingian Minuscule.

I just like Times Roman. I find Courier to be a little 'dated' looking, but that's a plus for some people.

I did some Desktop publishing back in the day (anyone remember Ventura Publishing? on floppies?... I have thousands of fonts (that Venetian font reminds me a bit of Century Schoolbook... I have Venitian somewhere.

There's a place called the Scriptorium (online) that has some very nice and elegant fonts, although except for the samples, they all cost...

Always wanted to have a press (freedom of the press is limited to those who own one...

I think Times Roman is one of the included fonts in Windows Operating systems, so people go with what they know. I do know that it takes up more space as it's increased in size (from 10pt to 12 pt really spreads out horizontally).

It's nice to talk to people who realize Kern is more than Worf's brother...