A Brief History of Times New Roman

> 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.

Nicely worded. Even if you don't want to bother with typography at all, Times New Roman is rarely a good default. It was designed for typesetting tall and narrow newspaper columns, not A4 or Letter width letters and memos.

We always hear so much about the history of Helvetica... nice for a change to read about the other big font out there

a brief history of helvetica and arial, posted here a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/the-scourge-of-ari...