Posted by italophil 12/10/2025
(https://practicaltypography.com/times-new-roman-alternatives...)
> 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. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void.
> If you have a choice about using Times New Roman, please stop. Use something else.
And on Calibri:
(https://practicaltypography.com/calibri-alternatives.html)
> Like Cambria, Calibri works well on screen. But in print, its rounded corners make body text look soft. If you need a clean sans serif font, you have better options.
- - -
To telegraph an identity, TNR is a good choice for this administration; so, credit where due, well played. Still, I would have gone with Comic Sans.
But I have no idea what font was used in the book I just finished reading or the book that I'm returning to later today. My main question about a font is whether I can read it with old eyes.
I do agree that designers should care about these matters. I'll add that for some portion of the reading public TNR more likely means The New Republic than Times New Roman.
[Five minutes later: the book just finished, What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, appears to be set in Palatino, never a favorite of mine. The one I'm returning to, I'm not sure.]
To spite these people I force the use of Arial on the worst offenders. The list is now a couple of thousand websites long.
I picked Arial so that I could tell the web pages apart from those who had the good taste to leave my web browsers standard font alone. I don't mind arial.
It's important to keep the smugness balanced, thanks for doing your part.
In Firefox: Settings → Fonts → Advanced… → untick Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above. I’ve been running this way for almost six years now; it makes the web so much better.
But yes I agree content must come first. Typeface probably comes second!
I don't often genuinely laugh out loud at comments on HN, but that one was good! Subtle, classy, and a gentle yet effective dig.
It’s clear, legible and whimsical.
Funny, I would have gone with Tannenberg
If you are a Deep Space 9 fan, this is where you get to scream, “It’s a fake!!!”
I’ll personally be taking my votes to supporters of Helvetica next election.
When senior government officials are spending time & public mindshare/attention on whether a particular font is or is not diverse then you know it is game over.
The details don't matter...this being a topic at all is the news
...but end of the day productive capacity is what matters. I don't see anyone close on that mix of pace, tech, low cost, ability to execute and scale.
A strong argument could be made on any of those metrics that someone could beat them fair and square, but the whole blend...there is nobody even competing in same league and that lead looks like it'll last rest of my lifetime
Every major country's demographics are shaky. Japan and S.Korea are already shrinking. The US is propped up by, uh, low-quality immigration, and fertility has nevertheless dropped to record lows. The large countries of Europe are either basket-cases, tinderboxes, or both. Germany and Italy haven't had above-replacement TFR since 1970!
China's not doing great, but having a population reservoir of 1.4B can make up for a lot of deficiencies. If everybody shrinks or becomes utterly dysfunctional, I'd bet that a vast, productive, essentially monoethnic nation weathers the storm better than the rest.
this approach is garbage, but i find your second line a bit odd.
it is also funny you bring up china because china changed their entire character system for diversity reasons (less educated people couldn't read).
Bro what. It was the default font in Microsoft for many years thus, it was the default font for most office software for many years -- just like Times New Roman was before.
What.
Generally sans-serif is advisable for small sizes, although I assume the main things are large open counters, tall x-height and low stroke contrast.
I’ve often read that dyslexics favor strongly distinctive characters and “grounded”, bottom-heavy letterforms. I feel like serifs actually sound pretty good there.
It’s also important to consider whether such studies were conducted before or after high-PPI displays became prevalent and leveled the playing field for serifs.
So while I prefer Calibri as TNR has been the default for longer and hence is more boring to me, I can understand people might prefer a serif font for readability.
Now! Everything in Fraktur! HH.
Also in Word etc, if I've got to spend a lot of time in a large document, I'll usually edit the paragraph body style temporarily to something sans serif. It's just better on screen.
Yes, for sites that use unreadably thin fonts, such as https://stratechery.com