
'Size and spacing comparisons' of the Georgia and Times New Roman typefaces.
'Times Roman' is a
serif typeface commissioned by ''
The Times'' (
London) newspaper in
1931 and designed by
Stanley Morison together with Starling Burgess and Victor Lardent at the English branch of
Monotype. It was commissioned to address the problems of high-speed printing on low quality newsprint. It was first issued by the
Monotype Corporation in
1932. Although no longer used by ''The Times,'' it is still widely used for book typography.
Description
Because of its ubiquitous nature, Times Roman has been influential in the subsequent development of a number of serif typefaces both before and after the start of the digital-font era. One notable example is
Georgia, shown at right, which has very similar stroke shapes to Times New Roman but wider serifs.
A version of Times Roman was produced by Monotype for
Microsoft, called '''Times New Roman''', and distributed with every copy of
Microsoft Windows since
version 3.1. As with ''Times'' on the
Apple Macintosh, it is used as the default
font in many
applications, especially
web browsers and
word processors. Microsoft has however replaced Times New Roman with
Calibri, a
sans-serif font, as the default font in
Microsoft Office 2007.
[1]
''Times New Roman'' is Microsoft's name for the
TrueType version of Times New Roman PS, a narrower variant of Monotype's classic Times New Roman typeface. The PS version was introduced to match the metrics of Times Roman (a
PostScript core font by
Linotype). It has the lighter capitals which were originally developed for printing German (where all nouns begin with a capital letter).
In
2004, the
U.S. State Department announced that as of
February 1,
2004, all U.S. diplomatic documents would use 14
point Times New Roman instead of the previous 12 point
Courier New.
Times Roman and Times New Roman
Times Roman is a body text,
serif typeface. It is
Linotype's licensed version of
Monotype's Times New Roman typeface.
The differences between Times Roman and Times New Roman PS are mostly a
trademark issue. Although there are subtle stylistic differences (for example, Linotype has slanted
serifs on the capital "S", Monotype's are vertical), most are invisible in body text at normal reading distances. (Vivid differences between the two versions do occur in the lowercase z in the italic weight and in the percent sign in all weights.) Although there was a time when Times New Roman had different widths than Times Roman, when Microsoft licensed Times New Roman for Windows, they asked Monotype to match the Adobe/Linotype widths from the PostScript font; as such, the most common versions seen today have identical widths in common characters.
Microsoft Windows computers feature
Monotype's Times New Roman PS while
Mac computers have
Linotype's Times Roman (simply named ''Times''). Computers running
free and
open source operating systems generally have
URW's
Nimbus Roman No9 L, which is URW's
PostScript version of Times Roman, released under the
GNU General Public License.
References
1. The end of an era for Times New Roman? - Andrew Whitacre, Fadtastic.net, accessed May 27, 2006
★ Lawson, Alexander S., ''
Anatomy of a Typeface''. Godine: 1990. ISBN 978-0879233334.
See also
★
Arial
★
Verdana
★
Core fonts for the Web
★
List of typefaces
★
Unicode fonts
External links
★
Typowiki: Times New Roman
★
Times New Roman (classic version)
★
Times New Roman font information (Microsoft typography)
★
Downloadable version of Times New Roman (
Core fonts for the Web)
★ ''
Times (New) Roman and its part in the Development of Scalable Font Technology''—Times Roman vs. Times New Roman