13 ms·

Times New Roman alternatives: You can do better (2013)

225 points by benbreen 6y ago

Jonnax 6y ago
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?
- throwaway287391 6y ago
  I don't mind Calibri, but I've always thought it was a surprising choice as a default since whenever MS Word switched to it. It just looks too "friendly" for "serious business" to me. I think if you interpolated between Helvetica and Comic Sans you'd get something like Calibri on the way. (PS I know nothing about typography.)
  - Avshalom 6y ago
    I'd bet that was partly on purpose to try and curb comic sans usage
    - mark-r 6y ago
      Comic Sans is too successful. It has such a perfect air of informality that it gets chosen by everyone who wants to avoid a stuffy formality. To me it goes too far though, like a clown suit.
- currysausage 6y ago
  My opinion: Calibri is an excellent font, created by one of the leading contemporary typographers, but like every default font, it is a non-choice, too boring for professional applications where style is a concern, thanks to its ubiquity. Roboto is (or: has become, its beginnings were somewhat rough) a great screen font, but for printed applications, it tends to look a little dull. This has to do with ubiquity, but also with the simplicity that is inherent to most screen fonts.
- joe5150 6y ago
  I don't care for Calibri and I wish Segoe were the default in Word.
  - pvorb 6y ago
    Yes! Segoe UI looks brilliant. I'm not sure how it looks on paper, though.
    - joe5150 6y ago
      I think it looks pretty good printed. https://imgur.com/a/mpJtv8o https://imgur.com/a/mpJtv8o
  - joegahona 6y ago
    Do you know if this is available in Google Docs? This is the font Notion uses, and I really like it.
    - joe5150 6y ago
      It doesn't appear to be. Microsoft provides an open-source alternative called Selawik which I suppose could in theory be added to Google Fonts and thus become available in Google Docs, but that hasn't happened.
  - Xenoamorphous 6y ago
    Is it me or the uppercase i looks a bit weird? Like a serif letter among sans serif ones?
    - joe5150 6y ago
      In Segoe UI? The uppercase letter i is sans. https://imgur.com/a/RxN88xs https://imgur.com/a/RxN88xs
      - Xenoamorphous 6y ago
        Ah it seems I was looking at the old Segoe.
- tln 6y ago
  They are excellent fonts. Neither is default across platforms though, nor are they serif fonts... For a sans serif, default font, I like Palatino. Classic, nice open counters.
  - gindely 6y ago
    Palatino is serif?
    - mark-r 6y ago
      Very much serif. I believe Apple used it as their corporate font back in the 1980's.
  - gjm11 6y ago
    (Obviously "sans serif" should say "serif".) I suggest that on any occasion when you're inclined to use Palatino for substantial quantities of text (as opposed to titles, posters, book covers, etc.) you would do better to use Aldus instead. (Aldus is a companion face to Palatino; Zapf's intention was that Palatino is for "display" use -- titles, posters, etc. -- and Aldus is for body-text.)
pvorb 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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".
mrob 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - mrob 6y ago
    I remember some trouble with Github many years ago, but it uses inline SVGs for icons now.
  - mixmastamyk 6y ago
    Been an option in the preferences since the days of Netscape, perhaps Mosaic.
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    That works on desktop, but not on Android. Any clue how to get Firefox on Android to obey about:config fot settings would be very welcome.
  - Tomte 6y ago
    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.
dsr_ 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.)
aasasd 6y ago
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.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- junky228 6y ago
  fwiw when I clicked the article it was in Valkyrie, and that's the first time I've ever been on that site
henriquez 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Are there any good free/libre alternatives?
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      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.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Deja Vu fonts are relentlessly unpleasant, blotchy and lumpen. Linux Libertine O is a better font in every way. If you really feel like you need a sans, Biolinum is pleasing.
jtth 6y ago
Fitzcarraldo makes Times New Roman sing. It's fine if you give attention to other aspects of typography. https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com
mtm7 6y ago
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.
- hatmatrix 6y ago
  Hacker News is almost minimalist in the same vein. What's its font though? It's pretty nonoffensive.
  - slater 6y ago
    Verdana
    - aasasd 6y ago
      Edit: scratch this, forgot about the ‘HN Enhancement’ extension. I see Helvetica Neue with fallback to Arial, and I checked that it's not my CSS. Verdana is pretty crappy for texts of even a comment length, as it's wide as heck. I have to hack it out with CSS on sites that I use regularly, or the eye gets tired in minutes.
      - slater 6y ago
        On news.ycombinator.com? It's Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css
      - hocuspocus 6y ago
        font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
FelipeCortez 6y ago
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/
julianeon 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Besides the practicaltypography website, reading Thinking with Type from Ellen Lupton was in my case a short, easy, and educative introduction to typography.
xupybd 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
stuartd 6y ago
I personally dislike all Serif fonts, but TNR most of all. Too much Windows, probably (I also loathe Arial)
- mark-r 6y ago
  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.
benhoyt 6y ago
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...
logicprog 6y ago
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
ken 6y ago
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?
- airstrike 6y ago
  An ad coupled with some pretty shoddy arguments against a font that is extremely legible. I like typography as much as the next geek, but I have purposefully chosen Times New Roman many times in the past because it is so damn easy on the eyes.
  - davedx 6y ago
    Yeah, I just uploaded a PDF paper and did quite a lot of careful "typesetting" of the layout, font sizes and so on. I deliberately left the font as Times New Roman because I honestly think it's very readable, especially in print format. "It connotes apathy" is a bit like accusing someone who eats enough vegetables of being "apathetic".
- paxys 6y ago
  How are they the same width? It's pretty clear just from a quick look that every character in Equity is much wider than the corresponding one in Times New Roman.
- fatbird 6y ago
  The site, and his complaints, came long before he had fonts to sell. And if you take the time and just read straight through it, you'll get a lot of knowledge and expert opinion (with which you may reasonably disagree), with no obligation or nagging to buy the fonts. The site started years ago purely as an "educate yourself about fonts and stop using the fucking defaults!" site.
blueridge 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Right on! Quick followup to share: https://typefoundry.directory https://typefoundry.directory
chiefgeek 6y ago
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. ;)
mtm7 6y ago
In a related vein, I’m curious to HN’s preferences. For electronic reading, do you prefer serif or sans-serif fonts?
- mark-r 6y ago
  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.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Absolutely serif. Sans for paragraph text is an abomination.
- Macha 6y ago
  For electronic reading, it's no contest for sans-serif for me. Really the only time I find serif easier is with low font size (like equivalent to 8px on my monitor) physical books. And it can only help so much, some newspapers here go lower, and while not unreadable, I wouldn't describe their text as clear.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
artsyca 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
tomp 6y ago
I'm not sure I want to take typography advice from a website that doesn't even underline its links.
ncmncm 6y ago
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.
jeffmcmahan 6y ago
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 6y ago
  > Plantin is not a "Times alternative," it is a variation on Bembo. Plantin was released about 15 years before Bembo.
  - jeffmcmahan 6y ago
    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".
- dhosek 6y ago
  Plantin is in no way a variation of Bembo. It's based on the designs of Robert Granjon and is the stated starting point for the roman (but not italic or bold) of TNR. Bembo, on the other hand is based on the designs of Aldus Manutius and has a distinctly different character (so to speak).
  - jeffmcmahan 6y ago
    Yes, they are more different that I initially thought.
- dheera 6y ago
  I'm also a type nerd and I can't stand Times New Roman. Or Arial, for that matter. It screams apathy to me because it has been the "default" for a long time and if among the thousands of excellent fonts out there you pick the default, it feels very much apathetic. It makes a piece of work look like a high school essay.
metrokoi 6y ago
>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 6y ago
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.
spongeb00b 6y ago
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...
DavidVoid 6y ago
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
rwoerz 6y ago
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).
vagab0nd 6y ago
I really like Nature's new font, Harding. But I don't think it's even commercially available.
jacinabox 6y ago
> " 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?
_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
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/ ]

225 points by benbreen 6y ago

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?

throwaway287391 6y ago
I don't mind Calibri, but I've always thought it was a surprising choice as a default since whenever MS Word switched to it. It just looks too "friendly" for "serious business" to me. I think if you interpolated between Helvetica and Comic Sans you'd get something like Calibri on the way. (PS I know nothing about typography.)
- Avshalom 6y ago
  I'd bet that was partly on purpose to try and curb comic sans usage
  - mark-r 6y ago
    Comic Sans is too successful. It has such a perfect air of informality that it gets chosen by everyone who wants to avoid a stuffy formality. To me it goes too far though, like a clown suit.
currysausage 6y ago
My opinion: Calibri is an excellent font, created by one of the leading contemporary typographers, but like every default font, it is a non-choice, too boring for professional applications where style is a concern, thanks to its ubiquity. Roboto is (or: has become, its beginnings were somewhat rough) a great screen font, but for printed applications, it tends to look a little dull. This has to do with ubiquity, but also with the simplicity that is inherent to most screen fonts.
joe5150 6y ago
I don't care for Calibri and I wish Segoe were the default in Word.
- pvorb 6y ago
  Yes! Segoe UI looks brilliant. I'm not sure how it looks on paper, though.
  - joe5150 6y ago
    I think it looks pretty good printed. https://imgur.com/a/mpJtv8o https://imgur.com/a/mpJtv8o
- joegahona 6y ago
  Do you know if this is available in Google Docs? This is the font Notion uses, and I really like it.
  - joe5150 6y ago
    It doesn't appear to be. Microsoft provides an open-source alternative called Selawik which I suppose could in theory be added to Google Fonts and thus become available in Google Docs, but that hasn't happened.
- Xenoamorphous 6y ago
  Is it me or the uppercase i looks a bit weird? Like a serif letter among sans serif ones?
  - joe5150 6y ago
    In Segoe UI? The uppercase letter i is sans. https://imgur.com/a/RxN88xs https://imgur.com/a/RxN88xs
    - Xenoamorphous 6y ago
      Ah it seems I was looking at the old Segoe.
tln 6y ago
They are excellent fonts. Neither is default across platforms though, nor are they serif fonts... For a sans serif, default font, I like Palatino. Classic, nice open counters.
- gindely 6y ago
  Palatino is serif?
  - mark-r 6y ago
    Very much serif. I believe Apple used it as their corporate font back in the 1980's.
- gjm11 6y ago
  (Obviously "sans serif" should say "serif".) I suggest that on any occasion when you're inclined to use Palatino for substantial quantities of text (as opposed to titles, posters, book covers, etc.) you would do better to use Aldus instead. (Aldus is a companion face to Palatino; Zapf's intention was that Palatino is for "display" use -- titles, posters, etc. -- and Aldus is for body-text.)

pvorb 6y ago

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 6y ago
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".

mrob 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- mrob 6y ago
  I remember some trouble with Github many years ago, but it uses inline SVGs for icons now.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Been an option in the preferences since the days of Netscape, perhaps Mosaic.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  That works on desktop, but not on Android. Any clue how to get Firefox on Android to obey about:config fot settings would be very welcome.
- Tomte 6y ago
  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.

dsr_ 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.)

aasasd 6y ago

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.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
junky228 6y ago
fwiw when I clicked the article it was in Valkyrie, and that's the first time I've ever been on that site

henriquez 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Are there any good free/libre alternatives?
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    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.
ncmncm 6y ago
Deja Vu fonts are relentlessly unpleasant, blotchy and lumpen. Linux Libertine O is a better font in every way. If you really feel like you need a sans, Biolinum is pleasing.

jtth 6y ago

Fitzcarraldo makes Times New Roman sing. It's fine if you give attention to other aspects of typography. https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com

mtm7 6y ago

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.

hatmatrix 6y ago
Hacker News is almost minimalist in the same vein. What's its font though? It's pretty nonoffensive.
- slater 6y ago
  Verdana
  - aasasd 6y ago
    Edit: scratch this, forgot about the ‘HN Enhancement’ extension. I see Helvetica Neue with fallback to Arial, and I checked that it's not my CSS. Verdana is pretty crappy for texts of even a comment length, as it's wide as heck. I have to hack it out with CSS on sites that I use regularly, or the eye gets tired in minutes.
    - slater 6y ago
      On news.ycombinator.com? It's Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css https://news.ycombinator.com/news.css
    - hocuspocus 6y ago
      font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;

FelipeCortez 6y ago

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/

julianeon 6y ago

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 6y ago
Besides the practicaltypography website, reading Thinking with Type from Ellen Lupton was in my case a short, easy, and educative introduction to typography.

xupybd 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.

stuartd 6y ago

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

mark-r 6y ago
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.

benhoyt 6y ago

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...

logicprog 6y ago

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

ken 6y ago

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?

airstrike 6y ago
An ad coupled with some pretty shoddy arguments against a font that is extremely legible. I like typography as much as the next geek, but I have purposefully chosen Times New Roman many times in the past because it is so damn easy on the eyes.
- davedx 6y ago
  Yeah, I just uploaded a PDF paper and did quite a lot of careful "typesetting" of the layout, font sizes and so on. I deliberately left the font as Times New Roman because I honestly think it's very readable, especially in print format. "It connotes apathy" is a bit like accusing someone who eats enough vegetables of being "apathetic".
paxys 6y ago
How are they the same width? It's pretty clear just from a quick look that every character in Equity is much wider than the corresponding one in Times New Roman.
fatbird 6y ago
The site, and his complaints, came long before he had fonts to sell. And if you take the time and just read straight through it, you'll get a lot of knowledge and expert opinion (with which you may reasonably disagree), with no obligation or nagging to buy the fonts. The site started years ago purely as an "educate yourself about fonts and stop using the fucking defaults!" site.

blueridge 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Right on! Quick followup to share: https://typefoundry.directory https://typefoundry.directory

chiefgeek 6y ago

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. ;)

mtm7 6y ago

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

mark-r 6y ago
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.
ncmncm 6y ago
Absolutely serif. Sans for paragraph text is an abomination.
Macha 6y ago
For electronic reading, it's no contest for sans-serif for me. Really the only time I find serif easier is with low font size (like equivalent to 8px on my monitor) physical books. And it can only help so much, some newspapers here go lower, and while not unreadable, I wouldn't describe their text as clear.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

artsyca 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.

tomp 6y ago

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

ncmncm 6y ago

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.

jeffmcmahan 6y ago

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 6y ago
> Plantin is not a "Times alternative," it is a variation on Bembo. Plantin was released about 15 years before Bembo.
- jeffmcmahan 6y ago
  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".
dhosek 6y ago
Plantin is in no way a variation of Bembo. It's based on the designs of Robert Granjon and is the stated starting point for the roman (but not italic or bold) of TNR. Bembo, on the other hand is based on the designs of Aldus Manutius and has a distinctly different character (so to speak).
- jeffmcmahan 6y ago
  Yes, they are more different that I initially thought.
dheera 6y ago
I'm also a type nerd and I can't stand Times New Roman. Or Arial, for that matter. It screams apathy to me because it has been the "default" for a long time and if among the thousands of excellent fonts out there you pick the default, it feels very much apathetic. It makes a piece of work look like a high school essay.

metrokoi 6y ago

>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 6y ago

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.

spongeb00b 6y ago

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...

DavidVoid 6y ago

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

rwoerz 6y ago

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).

vagab0nd 6y ago

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

jacinabox 6y ago

> " 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?

_emacsomancer_ 6y ago

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/ ]