| HN Mirror

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.