TNR was derived from a newspaper typeface that addressed two problems:
1. Newspapers are laid out in lots of narrow columns. You want to be able to pack a lot of letters in a short line.
2. Newsprint is a very think paper that absorbs ink, so you need think lines to minimize bleeding
Most people today don't write in tiny columns, so they throw TNR on an 8.5x11 document or a the main block of a website, and you wind up with line lengths that are too long. In use cases with narrow columns, that's fine, but it doesn't fit very well for the main body of text.
The second item is irrelevant. Instead, the thin lines are just harder to read on a screen.
You can test this: go to the new york times on your browser, open an article with dev tools, set the second paragraph in Times New Roman and the third in Georgia, and observe how well each one reads compared to the default font.
Georgia has a large x-height, is wider, has a variety of thin and think lines, all things meant to make it easier to read on low res screens that were the norm in the 90's. Georgia might not be the sleekest option on a retina screen, but it's still very readable.
All of this is more of an art than a science. You can have (or borrow) strong opinions, and have good reasons behind them, without anyone else being wrong.
TNR was derived from a newspaper typeface that addressed two problems:
1. Newspapers are laid out in lots of narrow columns. You want to be able to pack a lot of letters in a short line. 2. Newsprint is a very think paper that absorbs ink, so you need think lines to minimize bleeding
Most people today don't write in tiny columns, so they throw TNR on an 8.5x11 document or a the main block of a website, and you wind up with line lengths that are too long. In use cases with narrow columns, that's fine, but it doesn't fit very well for the main body of text.
The second item is irrelevant. Instead, the thin lines are just harder to read on a screen.
You can test this: go to the new york times on your browser, open an article with dev tools, set the second paragraph in Times New Roman and the third in Georgia, and observe how well each one reads compared to the default font.
Georgia has a large x-height, is wider, has a variety of thin and think lines, all things meant to make it easier to read on low res screens that were the norm in the 90's. Georgia might not be the sleekest option on a retina screen, but it's still very readable.
All of this is more of an art than a science. You can have (or borrow) strong opinions, and have good reasons behind them, without anyone else being wrong.