
Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013) - benbreen
https://practicaltypography.com/times-new-roman-alternatives.html
======
mtm7
I love a good font (and try to use one on my own blog), but part of me gets
really giddy when I discover a site with very little styling. It's like I've
found some secret oasis that's going to have a high signal-to-noise ratio, or
at least some more "raw" writing than you'd find on ${popularNewsWebsite}.
Some sites that come to mind:

\- [https://danluu.com/](https://danluu.com/)

\- [https://100r.co/site/home.html](https://100r.co/site/home.html)

\- [https://meagher.co/](https://meagher.co/)

\- [https://macwright.org/](https://macwright.org/)

Where Times really shines is printed material. I find it (and Garamond)
extremely easy to read.

For longform _screen_ reading, I usually prefer Georgia, Freight Text, Source
Serif, and Tiempos. San Francisco is a nice sans-serif font for this, too.

~~~
jakear
Those (almost) all do reasonably well where most “minimalist” sites fail,
accessibility. Many developers seem to get a kick out of “not caring about
design”, as some sort of point of pride, but at the same time put in just
enough CSS to screw over the visually-disabled.

HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS.

Also, the above macwright cuts off the titles to make room for the Dates, so
to me the site looks like:

Rec...2020-06-01

Sec...2020-05-10

Link...2020-05-02

Rec...2020-05-01

~~~
Isamu
> HN, for instance, can’t be zoomed in iOS

Both pinch-to-zoom and increasing font size work for me in iOS Safari, what
zoom are you talking about?

~~~
jakear
Using the font menu in the address bar to change the scaling should increase
find size _and_ reflow the text to fit in that size. Currently it just zooms
in a. la. pinching. It works correctly on the home page, but not in a comments
page.

~~~
baddox
It works fine up to 125% for me, but then it just zooms when you increase to
150%.

------
ken
He lists only three 'flaws' with Times New Roman. The first is:

> It was created for a newspaper, so it’s a bit narrower than most text fonts

yet all the alternatives are almost exactly the same width. Plantin is even a
bit narrower. How do they "avoid its shortcomings"?

The second flaw is "italic is mediocre", which I'm not in a position to judge.

The third (and main) complaint is "it connotes apathy", and one of the
suggested alternatives is:

> EQUITY (designed by me).

I'm all for artists promoting their work, as long as they're honest about it.
This page is basically an ad, right?

~~~
juped
If you're upset by Butterick linking to his own font then you're not "all for
artists promoting their work". This is ridiculous. Is he supposed to pretend
he doesn't make fonts in his book about typography?

~~~
ken
It’s a good thing I’m not upset by it, then.

------
aasasd
Has the default font on that site been changed? IIRC it was Valkyrie, but now
Century Supra is selected for me, and it doesn't seem to elicit quite the same
breath-taking effect. (Not talking about Times New Roman on the linked page.)
If my memory and senses don't fault me in the tiredness and drunkenness, then
switching to Valkyrie (at the bottom) is highly advised, as with it this site
is the most beautiful on the whole web. Every single interval is perfect,
which causes fits of irremediable envy for me.

However, Firefox Preview on my phone doesn't seem to answer my efforts towards
the aesthetic bliss and refuses to load the font.

BTW, my personal favorite _free_ serif font is Merriweather—particularly for
reading long texts. It's somewhat overused on the web, but it's so much better
than the next thing. It has the exact right ‘density’, and the shapes are
playful just enough to not tire out the eye.

As for sans-serif, alas! If I could have Rosario with good kerning and support
for more languages, or Optima with a bit less contrast and more humanistic
shapes—I'd be so happy. Until then, it's back to Fira Sans again and again.

~~~
junky228
fwiw when I clicked the article it was in Valkyrie, and that's the first time
I've ever been on that site

------
mrob
The best three fonts are: "sans-serif" (for general use), "monospace" (for
code), and "serif" (for when you need a secondary font for contrast).

The choice of implementation for these fonts should be left to the reader (who
will probably use the defaults for their browser/ebook reader). This way
everybody gets the fonts they're used to, which are the easiest fonts to read.
I don't even know which exact font I'm looking at now, but I know that I don't
allow web designers to change it.

~~~
frank2
I would be interested in reading more about how you prevent web designers from
changing the page's font. I used about:config on Firefox to stop fonts from
downloading, but that made it hard for me to use github.com and one or 2 other
sites because those sites use a font to render icons that are essential parts
of the UI.

~~~
Tomte
In Firefox: Options – Language and Appearance – Fonts and Colors – Advanced… –
Disable “Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections
above”

It's what I've been using for months now (and I also block web fonts using
Firefox Focus' extension in iOS/iPadOS Safari). And that's even though I'm a
typography geek, and have bought fonts from Matthew Butterick (the author of
the submitted article).

Looks weird for a day or two, after that you never miss web fonts.

Make sure to select a nice default font (for example, Verdana is nice, but I'm
German, and Verdana does not have a closing quotation mark for German – it's
another one than is in use in English).

My setting is Constantia as default font and serif, Segoe UI as sans-serif,
and Consolas as monospace.

------
pvorb
I think there's a chance that if a document is set in Times New Roman, the
author focussed on the content rather than the presentation, which usually is
a good thing.

~~~
fatbird
It's not an either/or proposition; and given the low cost of changing the base
font for a document, all using the defaults says is "I don't care about
presentation at all".

------
blueridge
Since we're talking fonts, I'll recommend a few of my favorites, all serifs:

Lyon Text:
[https://commercialtype.com/catalog/lyon_text](https://commercialtype.com/catalog/lyon_text)

Blanco: [https://www.fostertype.com/retail-
type/blanco](https://www.fostertype.com/retail-type/blanco)

Bridge Text: [https://www.typemates.com/fonts/bridge-
text](https://www.typemates.com/fonts/bridge-text)

Arnhem:
[https://www.typeby.com/fonts/arnhem](https://www.typeby.com/fonts/arnhem)

Heldane: [https://klim.co.nz/retail-fonts/heldane-
text/](https://klim.co.nz/retail-fonts/heldane-text/)

Ivar Text: [https://lettersfromsweden.se/font/ivar-
text/](https://lettersfromsweden.se/font/ivar-text/)

Gliko Modern: [http://r-typography.com/19_gliko-
modern/](http://r-typography.com/19_gliko-modern/)

Rialto Piccolo: [https://fontstand.com/fonts/rialto-piccolo-
df](https://fontstand.com/fonts/rialto-piccolo-df)

~~~
propter_hoc
Thanks for the suggestions! I checked them all out. Lyon, Ivar and Arnhem are
quite nice substitutes for Times.

The others I find a bit too "designed" to be used as straight substitutes.
Their design is quite striking, and risks distracting from the message in long
paragraph text. Particularly Gliko, which is beautiful for titling but I can't
imagine reading more than a few sentences of it.

I'm personally quite partial to the Adobe fonts for book text:

* Adobe Garamond [https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/adobe-garamond#fonts-section](https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/adobe-garamond#fonts-section)

* Adobe Caslon [https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/adobe-caslon#fonts-section](https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/adobe-caslon#fonts-section)

* And to some degree, even Minion [https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/minion](https://fonts.adobe.com/fonts/minion)

~~~
blueridge
Right on!

Quick followup to share:
[https://typefoundry.directory](https://typefoundry.directory)

------
Jonnax
Honestly speaking for myself I think roboto and Calibri are excellent fonts.

Readable and aesthetically pleasing, what's the general opinion on these
default fonts in the typography world?

~~~
joe5150
I don't care for Calibri and I wish Segoe were the default in Word.

~~~
pvorb
Yes! Segoe UI looks brilliant. I'm not sure how it looks on paper, though.

~~~
joe5150
I think it looks pretty good printed.

[https://imgur.com/a/mpJtv8o](https://imgur.com/a/mpJtv8o)

------
FelipeCortez
I finished Practical Typography yesterday and highly recommend it! In fact, I
recommend anything Matthew Butterick I’ve seen so far. Triplicate is a perfect
programming font, Pollen, Beautiful Racket, Reversing the Tide of Declining
Expectations [1], his newsletter...

[1] [https://unitscale.com/mb/reversing-the-
tide/](https://unitscale.com/mb/reversing-the-tide/)

------
henriquez
The DejaVu Serif fonts bundled with Ubuntu are a really nice alternative to
Times New Roman (and much nicer licensing!)

I have a hard time quantifying why, but they’re much easier on the eyes.

Not a shameless plug I swear but we converted DejaVu Serif to a web font and
used it here, if you want to see it “in action:”
[https://www.obsessivefacts.com/memespeech](https://www.obsessivefacts.com/memespeech)

~~~
Mediterraneo10
Unfortunately, development of the DejaVu fonts stalled years ago. There are
still some typographic infelicities that could be ironed out, and its Unicode
coverage basically stopped at where Unicode was in the early millennium.

~~~
henriquez
Are there any good free/libre alternatives?

~~~
Mediterraneo10
One of the reasons that DejaVu’s development stalled is because Google
launched the Noto Fonts project, which is free/libre (SIL Open Font License)
and quickly outdid DejaVu in Unicode coverage.

------
julianeon
This was an interesting read, thanks.

I can see Times New Roman being the choice of no choice - when you don't think
about it, you get that.

Reading this inspired me to think that I should search for an article like,
"best fonts for people who don't know anything except Google Fonts" (I
searched Google, wasn't very illuminating).

I don't know much more than Comic Sans bad, Helvetica good, Times New Roman
meh. But, I'm learning.

~~~
krlx
Besides the practicaltypography website, reading Thinking with Type from Ellen
Lupton was in my case a short, easy, and educative introduction to typography.

------
dsr_
For long-form text, my eyes are now persuaded that only TeX Gyre Pagella and
very close relatives -- Palatino, Palladio -- will do.

Luckily I can usually arrange for that.

~~~
gindely
I used to share that thought, and I have a font that hangs around called
Modded Palatinx that contains a few improvements from the days when it was
more important to me that my system be right, than that it be compatible. But
nowadays, it looks a bit weak compared to other serifs - more of an
acknowledgement of serifs without their meat. It's possible that hi res
screens has made me think differently. I'm not sure.

(But in any case, the standard Computer Modern Roman is not my cup of tea. I
like more rounded fonts, but its serifs are too strong and dominate the
shape.)

------
artsyca
To me this conversation is more about popular opinions in general and how many
of them persist as a result of ubiquity over any sort of merit

Times Roman is just another example of the defaults becoming the standard and
we've all been trained to know the defaults serve hardly anyone yet we keep
hammering away at them relentlessly as if they'll give us anything but default
outcomes

~~~
michaelcampbell
I love every article that comes up on HN/reddit about typography and fonts
because the inevitable onslaught of "I find X unreadable and Y delightful
because of Z" gives me new fonts to try.

There is some objectiveness to this subject but damned little and 99% of the
comments are opinion. As a developer of many years, I've learned to just skip
over any post that uses any form of the 'readability' adjective. It's totally
subjective, and the poster more often than not will have a religious fervor
about their opinion.

~~~
artsyca
Strong opinions held loosely.

For a lot of us fonts were a key selling point of early computing and there's
a story about Steve Jobs taking in design courses in fonts as an inspiration
for the design of the Mac operating system.

The whole concept of fonts on the machine is another example of the message in
the new medium essentially encapsulating the old.

Fonts are an important tradition going back to the printing press and we are
rightfully protective of them.

------
DavidVoid
I stumbled upon this article on readability recently [1]. It mentioned an
interesting "rule" about what the optimal typeface width is for readability.

Apparently the "rule" is that the lowercase alphabet should take up about 13
em of space.

From this image [2], you can see that Nimbus Roman No9 (which is a Times New
Roman clone) is a little bit narrower than that. It would be interesting to
see what the lowercase alphabet width is of the fonts proposed in the OP.
Especially since the author noted that one of the criticisms of Times New
Roman is that it's "too narrow".

[1]
[https://hstuart.dk/2008/02/13/readability/](https://hstuart.dk/2008/02/13/readability/)

[2]
[https://hstuart.dk/img/2008-02-13-widths.png](https://hstuart.dk/img/2008-02-13-widths.png)

------
tomp
I'm not sure I want to take typography advice from a website that doesn't even
underline its links.

------
_emacsomancer_
In addition to appearance, there are of course potentially other constraining
factors in font choice, depending on your use case.

For instance, I need a good 'editor' font which is both monospace _and_
supports combining diacritics well, for writing papers in LaTeX in Emacs.

And I need good 'display' fonts for the PDF output of those LaTeX documents,
which also of course have to support a wide range of combining diacritics
well.

For both use cases, there is a surprisingly small range of choices given the
full set of constraints.

[Details here: [https://babbagefiles.xyz/beautiful-and-free-
typefaces/](https://babbagefiles.xyz/beautiful-and-free-typefaces/) ]

------
logicprog
I found a really good new font recently which I'm going to be using in place
of Baskerville and Times New Roman, my two go-to serif fonts. It's called
Literata[1], and it (to me at least) conveys this really nice professional,
formal look, which approximates what I feel when I open a printed book, but on
the screen. There's something to it that's hard to describe that I really like
(also the italics is very good imo).

[1]:
[https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Literata?query=liter](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Literata?query=liter)

------
jtth
Fitzcarraldo makes Times New Roman sing. It's fine if you give attention to
other aspects of typography.

[https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com](https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com)

------
jeffmcmahan
First, as a type nerd, I don't agree that Times is a bad font or that it
signals "apathy." When I see nice kerning, judicious leading and tracking in a
book design or webpage using a Times font - particularly LaTeX documents using
TeX Gyre Termes - I'm generally very pleased.

Second, Plantin is not a "Times alternative," it is a variation on Bembo.
Bembo is the opposite of Times ... it is e x p a n s i v e. It's like
suggesting black as an alternative to white.

Third, I think the best alternative is actually NYT Imperial.

~~~
threepio
> Plantin is not a "Times alternative," it is a variation on Bembo.

Plantin was released about 15 years before Bembo.

~~~
jeffmcmahan
I stand corrected. Let me rather say that Plantin shares a lot more with (say)
Bembo than it does with Times, and I don't see why either would be a times
"alternative".

------
metrokoi
>When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it
connotes apathy. It says, “I submitted to the font of least resistance.” Times
New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like
the blackness of deep space is not a color.

The author never considers the fact that a writer may simply like the way
Times New Roman looks. There's nothing wrong with liking things that are
popular or the default choice.

------
arketyp
I grew up with Times New Roman as the default font in MS Word. It's not the
default any longer but I tend to switch to it _precisely because_ it is the
font that symbolizes least resistance. "To look at Times New Roman is to gaze
into the void" is often exactly the statement I want to make with my
presentation, similar to how I can romanticize the typewriter and _not_ having
a choice with font and layout.

------
xupybd
I really can't tell between a good font and a bad one. I have no idea how to
develop a sense for good typography despite recognising it's importance.

~~~
michaelcampbell
This may be the most honest post in this thread. Bravo. (I'm with you; I know
what I like and don't pretend my opinion is any more than that.)

Look how many posts here use emotionally charged words like "unreadable",
"love", "hate", "loathe", "abomination", etc.

------
benhoyt
I don't disagree with this from a design point of view (I'm not a designer),
but I can't stand the modern web thing of "I'm using a fancy custom font, so
you'll see website load and then flash over to the correct font after a second
or two". In an attempt to use a slick font we've made things look really
janky. But I guess it's not the designer's FOUT...

------
spongeb00b
Reports we did in high school were supposed to be submitted in Times, but I
hated it for the same reason of it just being the default. I always used
Garamond instead. I don't expect many of the teachers knew or cared about the
difference, but it made me feel a whole lot better. I was such a rebel...

------
mtm7
In a related vein, I’m curious to HN’s preferences. For electronic reading, do
you prefer serif or sans-serif fonts?

~~~
mark-r
I prefer sans serif on a typical resolution PC monitor. I might prefer serif
on a high-DPI but only my phone qualifies, and I don't do much reading on
that.

------
vagab0nd
I really like Nature's new font, Harding. But I don't think it's even
commercially available.

------
stuartd
I personally dislike all Serif fonts, but TNR most of all. Too much Windows,
probably (I also loathe Arial)

~~~
mark-r
I too hate TNR, but mostly just because I think it's ugly and too small.
Georgia makes a surprising alternative for Windows users - it's the same style
but the details are much better thought out.

------
ncmncm
My favorite is "Linux Libertine O". My desktop browser is set to use it for
serif, sans serif, and all page-specified fonts except mono (which is
Inconsolata).

Firefox on Android refuses to use the fonts I have designated in about:config,
so HN remains depressingly sans.

------
chiefgeek
So funny, I was just helping my 20 year old with a page layout in which she
had used TNR. I said, "We need to select ANYTHING but Times New Roman."
Article forwarded. ;)

------
jacinabox
> " In 1984, Apple licensed Times Roman for the Macintosh; in 1992, Microsoft
> licensed Times New Roman for Windows."

Holy frig, Monotype vs. Linotype flamewar anyone?

------
rwoerz
Worst thing for me in TNR: rn looks like m. Learned that the funny way in a
lecture I gave about Apache Maven (with its pom.xml).

