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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)

#111

Post by quietbritishjim »

dhosek wrote: post #90
quietbritishjim wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most monitors are definitely still not high enough resolution to render serif fonts more clearly than sans serif ones. (By resolution, I mean the original meaning of pixel density per unit area, not the modern usage of total pixel count.) Mobile screens are obviously higher resolution so it's less clear cut, but sans serif are still a bit clearer in my view. I think the problem here is that the text is much smaller i…

When I first became interested in type, monitors typically had a resolution in the neighborhood of 72–96ppi. My MBP, according to Apple's support site, has a resolution of 226ppi. Back in the 80s I had speculated that 300ppi was a minimum for good typography, but maybe it's my aging eyesight, but I find that what I've got on my laptop is more than sufficient to use most typefaces (and the fact that there's no pixel s…

Certainly, when I "most monitors", I was muttering under my breath, "basically all of them except Apples".

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

#112

Post by busfahrer »

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’m not well versed in typography by any means, but isn’t long form reading and sans-serif a contradiction in terms?

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

#113

Post by duckerude »

Veen wrote: post #107
thomasahle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Navigating PT for the first time wasn't as easy as the examples given above though. Links were just plain black with no decoration, making me have to guess at every click what was navigation.

They're plain black but internal links are indicated with small caps and external links with Butterick's odd red degree symbol°. It seems to me to sufficiently distinguish them.

It's enough to distinguish them once you've figured it out, but it's not clear that they're links just from looking at them. I had to hover over them to be sure.

Conventions are useful.

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

#114

Post by sjwright »

busfahrer wrote: post #112
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’m not well versed in typography by any means, but isn’t long form reading and sans-serif a contradiction in terms?

In my estimation, legibility is as much a function of familiarity as anything.

I think the degree to which serifs aid legibility is overstated. Any studies are likely biased through familiarity of serif fonts by test subjects, since that’s what most printed reading material used.

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

#115

Post by enriquto »

logicprog wrote: post #41
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 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…

Regarding [1], you can simplify it even further by ditching jekyll altogether and writing the html directly.

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

#116

Post by 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/

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

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

#118

Post by discreditable »

frank2 wrote: post #11
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…

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.

In ublock you can block remote fonts globally, then toggle them on for sites that need it.

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

#119

Post by Macha »

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?

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.

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

#120

Post by Xenoamorphous »

joe5150 wrote: post #8
Jonnax wrote: post #2

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?

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

Is it me or the uppercase i looks a bit weird? Like a serif letter among sans serif ones?
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