[jacobolus]

I find CM a bit boring because of how pervasive it is in math and science papers, and it really doesn’t work well with some types of documents, but Times is almost always awful, with only few exceptions. In particular, most of the commercially available computer Times typefaces have crappy kerning, are missing typographic features (ligatures, fractions, small caps, etc.), often have awful glyphs for common symbols (especially @, ugh), have a limited number of fonts optimized for particular sizes and uses. In general, Times has a very inconsistent look from one letter to another (w/t/t the stroke angle and various letter forms) and results in uneven and distracting text. I find it to be quite unpleasant in contexts like books or academic papers. Moreover, it is still very much overused.

Using Times in a document implies to the reader that the author/typesetter either doesn’t care very much about typography or is being pushed around by some overbearing external style guide or clueless client. In the latter case, it is possible to use Times well and produce workable documents, but it takes a lot of extra hard work on the part of the typesetter.

If your only goal is to fit more text in, there are dozens of better choices.

[cactusface]

Okay, so what's a drop in replacement for Times that comes with standard LaTeX distributions? It must fit as much or more text and ACM must be okay with it.

Reviewers will actually criticize authors for using CM, preferring to have the extra information.

[tmrgn]

There's Matthew Carter's great Charter, which is free to use and on CTAN. You might have to decrease the font-size a little to match TNR's space efficiency.

\usepackage{charter}

[tomjen3]

The best font in the world is included in LaTeX: New Century Schoolbook.

Don't let the name fool you, the font is optimised for readability which means you can drop the font size and it will still be easier to read than CM at a higher font size but you get more space to work with.

[jacobolus]

I am not familiar with the ACM’s style guidelines, sorry. I assume most ACM journals are going to have professional typesetters fix up documents to match the journal style, so if you’re just talking about what typeface to use in a draft/preprint, it won’t make it through to the final published paper anyway, so it probably doesn’t matter much. For conference proceedings, I dunno.. maybe make one version for the conference matching the style guidelines, and then a prettier version to host on your own webpage?

[cactusface]

Yes for journals, but most CS papers are published at conferences. Depending on the conference, not every paper uses the same typeface - except, most people use Times because it is space-efficient.

Anyway, forget about ACM. What's as space-efficient as Times and also prettier?

[jacobolus]

I’m a fan of Slimbach’s typeface Minion, which is quite compact and looks sharp in most any context where Times would be appropriate, but doesn’t call any special attention to itself. A version typically comes with any Adobe Pro apps from the past decade at least, and in some cases is the default typeface I believe. Minion is therefore also quite overused, but not as bad IMO as Times or CM, and it’s much easier to make a good looking document with than Times is.

There are also some TeX-friendly math glyphs http://ctan.sharelatex.com/tex-archive/fonts/mnsymbol/MnSymb...

[bshimmin]

Some people also feel quite strongly about Minion: http://practicaltypography.com/minion-alternatives.html

Fonts are so divisive!

[jacobolus]

He asked for a replacement for Times that would be appropriate in a technical paper with support for LaTeX formulae, while taking up less horizontal space than Times at the same point size. The goal here isn’t to be unique or prove that we’re typographically trendy, but to look good, be legible, and fit the requirements.

The main problem I have with Times isn’t that it’s overused, but more that it’s inappropriate for many contexts, and the specific implementations of Times are often bad. If you want to use Times at 8 pt, 10 pt, 12 pt, and 16 pt in the same document, and you pick up a typical digital implementation, at least some of those sizes are going to look crappy because there are no specific fonts included for display or caption sizes. If you need small caps or lowercase numbers you’re out of luck. If you want good kerning you’re going to have to manually adjust the kerning tables. (Not to mention, Times just doesn’t look very nice or even in the best case.) By contrast, Minion is an excellently designed and carefully implemented typeface which has been one of Adobe’s gems for decades and seen lots of polishing.

I think Butterick’s comments are inapplicable in general in this example: we’re talking about an academic typesetting his own documents not a professional typographer doing a paid job. But even in proper context, I think Butterick is being a little silly here. The job of a typographer is to figure out the client’s needs and solve the client’s design problems. Sometimes that means turning out stylish layouts that turn heads, but just as often that means getting all the little details right so the design gets out of the way and lets the content shine for itself.

[apricot]

As a person who uses Minion by choice, and actually spent quite a bit of time configuring LaTeX to support Minion (not to mention quite a bit of money buying the actual font, before it was bundled with Adobe products), the fact that Minion could become the new Times saddens me.

[cactusface]

Great, thanks for the recommendation! I will give it a shot.