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

practicaltypography.com

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

#61

Post by [deleted] »

technothrasher wrote: post #31
mrob wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's anything inherently more legible about either serif or sans-serif fonts. Whichever one you read the most will be most legible to you, which means the default shouldn't be changed even when it's no longer technically necessary.

Common wisdom is that serif fonts are easier to read, but most research I've read on the topic show either very small or no readability increase with serif over san-serif fonts. As an example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4612630/

[deleted]

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

#62

Post by mark-r »

Avshalom wrote: post #5
throwaway287391 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I'd bet that was partly on purpose to try and curb comic sans usage

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.

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

#63

Post by mark-r »

mtm7 wrote: post #55

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

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.

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

#64

Post by henriquez »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #37
henriquez wrote: post #18

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

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.

Are there any good free/libre alternatives?

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

#65

Post by mark-r »

stuartd wrote: post #28

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

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.

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

#66

Post by Wowfunhappy »

mtm7 wrote: post #23

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://100r.co/site/home.html - https://meagher.co/ - https…

I wonder if Times New Roman would look better on an extremely high resolution screen, or if there's something else that would have to change in how we produce screens. (Increased contrast, or the lack of a backlight, for example.)

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

#67

Post by mark-r »

aasasd wrote: post #34
slater wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verdana

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.

Wide is good, it improves readability. If you want a narrower version of the same font, try Tahoma.

As a more readable version of Times New Roman, I like Georgia. It too was commissioned by Microsoft as a web font.

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

#68

Post by logicprog »

sho_hn wrote: post #52
logicprog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on the formatting of blogs. For my new philosophy blog[1] I went for hyper-minimal HTML and CSS, statically rendered with Jekyll, no JS at all. As part of that, I had to select a really nice font, since that's basically the only actual styling on the site, so I went for Literara[2], which I recently discovered and am totally enamored with. Besides Bookerly (I have a Kindle), Literata is the hands-dow…

Literata was commissioned by Google as the new default font in Play Books, btw.

I actually checked the about page for the first time when posting, and sure enough, you're correct. Google has good font design sense, I guess what with Roboto too. Cool!

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

#69

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

henriquez wrote: post #64
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are there any good free/libre alternatives?

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.

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

#70

Post by somewhereoutth »

mrob wrote: post #7

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 looki…

Ah but fonts are so important to the 'look and feel' of any publication that has text (and possibly even to those that don't!).

They are also important to the built environment - in Lisbon, Portugal where I now live, all the signage I see out and about is sans-serif, possibly the same font, and quite likely by the same handful of design agencies. I am genuinely feeling oppressed by sans-serif!! I long for serif, or indeed anything to indicate individuality and self expression (the graffiti is sometimes really good though).

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