A brief history of Times New Roman
23 comments
·December 16, 2025SunshineTheCat
gjvc
as we used to say a browser failed to load CSS or parts thereof: "and the whole thing goes Times New Roman ..."
skobes
I'm fond of STIX Two, which is very close to Times New Roman but just a little bit nicer, especially the italic.
creata
I agree! More praise: it's well-hinted, has good support for Unicode and math, and comes packaged with macOS.
It should be mentioned that the x-height is much higher than the usual Times New Roman, which is usually a good thing imo, but different.
tolerance
The irony is that Butterick’s “Equity” is beautiful.
treetalker
My preferred font for federal work. Sadly all Florida appellate documents must be set in 14-point Arial or Bookman Old Style — a choice in name only.
One would think that by now we'd have a way to draft and file litigation papers in plain text, perhaps with some light markup, and then the courts could automatically generate cover pages, case styles, and tables of contents and authorities; each judge could apply his own preferred styling for working with it (like a LaTeX class file); and the courts could make the official document available to the public in html and pdf versions in whatever typesetting they deem appropriate. (Even better if the public could choose the format — CSS, perhaps.)
Instead we have ever-shifting rules and standards for compliance, which vary by jurisdiction, and which waste inestimable time, energy, and expense for rules committees, lawyers, administrative staff, printers, and, of course, clients.
faccacta
Some courts publish word processing templates for briefs; for example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit: https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/court-forms-fees/brief-template...
The Eighth Circuit gets really into this, publishing a typography guide for lawyers: https://federalcourt.press/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Eighth...
Judges, particularly appellate judges, spend a lot of their time reading briefs. So, as you can see, some of them have strong opinions about brief typography. (Judges, as a group, have strong opinions about lots of things).
treetalker
Indeed. I think what I'm imagining is something like Typst for courts and lawyers.
Imagine if, nationwide, we lawyers could draft in plain text and never (or rarely) have to worry about court-specific typesetting rules or wrestling with Word!
Wistar
I just read the complete Eighth Circuit guide and found it to an excellent reference. Thank you for the link.
creata
> each judge could apply his own preferred styling for working with it
It kind of makes sense to ensure that everyone is seeing the same thing, though, which is something PDF is (relatively) good at.
GuinansEyebrows
> each judge could apply his own preferred styling for working with it
imagine going to court and the judge has mandated that all documents be prepared using 18pt Jokerman[0], or that all headings must use Bleeding Cowboys[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jokerman_(typeface)
[1] https://www.dafont.com/bleeding-cowboys.fonttreetalker
I understand what you and creata are saying, and I don't necessarily disagree. What I mean is that everyone (judges and lawyers alike) could easily work off their own copy and refer to, say, paragraph numbers when necessary.
For instance, I would like 12-pt with ~1.2 line spacing, something akin to Tufte — so I have a nice wide margin to make notes and summaries.
giraffe_lady
He's one of the best font developers working right now, he has a couple that I consider pretty much flawless examples within their categories.
Which is pretty funny because he's one of the typographers that is best known for his actual typography, ie information about arranging text on a plane, vs twiddling with letter design which is what most people think of with typography.
CivBase
This article has a weird progression.
It starts with the origins of TNR. Then it basically says it's a decent font with no significant problems. Then it talks about how it's popular because it's the default.
Then in the last paragraph it takes a hard stance that you should not use TNR unless required. It even implores the reader with a bold "please stop". It makes no arguments to support this stance and offers no alternatives.
creata
That's because it's not an article, it's a section of Butterick's book. (He also has a book at https://practicaltypography.com/ that isn't targeted at lawyers, and I think a lot of the content overlaps.)
I agree that he's a bit too mean to mainstream fonts, though.
skobes
This is not a standalone article but a section from Butterick's book, "Typography for Lawyers", which is hosted in full on the website. The book is an opinionated style manual, and many alternatives are described in nearby sections.
guestbest
It does seem like it is trying to force a trend without giving one solid reason.
DiogenesKynikos
Here's what is says about Times New Roman:
> Objectively, there’s nothing wrong with Times New Roman. It was designed for a newspaper, so it’s a bit narrower than most text fonts—especially the bold style. (Newspapers prefer narrow fonts because they fit more text per line.) The italic is mediocre. But those aren’t fatal flaws. Times New Roman is a workhorse font that’s been successful for a reason.
It says that there are problems. They're just not fatal.
> It even implores the reader with a bold "please stop". It makes no arguments to support this stance and offers no alternatives.
It says that there are plenty of alternatives (it specifically mentions Helvetica) that are better than Times New Roman. The argument is that Times New Roman is okay, but that it has flaws, and that there are easily available fonts that are superior. If someone is devoted enough to fonts to write a blog about them, then the existence of superior alternatives is enough of a reason to not use a font.
CivBase
The author provides a single critisism ("The italic is mediocre"), does not elaborate, then immediately hedges their critique.
Helvetica is used as an example of a font which garners more "affection" in contrast to TNR, but is never praised by the author or recommended as an alternative - at least not in the linked passage.
DiogenesKynikos
The author also criticizes the narrowness of the font (and particularly of the bold style). They're not trying to argue that Times New Roman is terrible - just that it's substandard.
citizenkeen
Helvetica is not usually in the running for use by lawyers.
Times New Roman was ruined for me after years of it being what InDesign defaults to when a font is missing (along with a big ugly pink highlight). Years of associating the font with something being "broken" has pretty much left me never wanting to see it again.
My personal bias aside, in terms of a typeface itself, it's ok, but it feels like there have always been a number of alternatives that are stylistically better or more readable.
But as with anything in type, it just depends on what personality/style you're wanting to convey with it.