Yes, definitely. That kerning difference is what makes TNR look so coarse compared with Times and can build up over a long document so that you don’t just get words shifted to new lines, you can also end up with pagination differences. It’s why I always use TNR in documents I need to send to a colleague, especially one using Chinese Windows.
And an added problem with Chinese Windows/Word is that when they switch between Chinese and English, the glyphs that are used are the TNR-alike Roman character set within the (Simplified) Chinese font, which are really badly kerned for the alphanumerics and which uses the punctuation characters designed for the Chinese. Chinese is monospaced with each character occupying the same horizontal (and vertical) space irrespective of number of strokes … and that includes the punctuation. So the text ends up full of blank space … university’ s instead of university’s. Horrendous!
Mark
Oh, I adore Hoefler Text. Hoefler text regular face is a relatively standard serif font - upstanding and at least on par with Garamond Pro - but it’s when you, fingers trembling, hit Cmd-i, that Hoefler text really shines. It’s got the best, hands down the best italic face there is. I get all shivery just talking about it (and yes I’m aware of how silly it is to be in love with a medium rather than a message, but what the hey).
It’s actually a shame that I don’t write the sort of fantasy that italicises every second made-up word. Alas, instead I find myself thinking ‘now how can I fit the some latin genus name into this chapter on fish spawning…’
That being said, there’s another font, erm, Fangsong? It’s an Adobe font, I’m quite fond of it, for regular face stuff.
On the web, where fonts are limited, I find a nice generic sans like Helvetica works a treat.
Hmm … Hoefler text itself is OK … I used to use it on Keynote, but I’ve changed to Optima. I didn’t notice anything special about the italics, though and I didn’t like the old-face style numbers for what I was doing.
Fang Song? Are you also a Chinese user? Since the demise of Song with 10.4, I use Fang Song as my default, but it has one big problem … I prepare my handouts for my classes in InDesign and export them to PDF for the students. InDesign won’t export FangSong, 'cos it’s not licensed to be included in the PDF, so I have a choice of Kai or Hei … I quite like Kai, but it’s not as clear as Fang Song.
On the other hand, the Roman font within Fang Song is absolutely ghastly to my eye, and it uses the Chinese punctuation with the wide spacing, so in mixed text I have to keep swapping between that and TNR.
Mark
I’ll add mine, as no-one has mentioned it. I am very partial to a typeface called Myriad. I use it for my corporate stationery.
For websites I like Trebuchet MS or Arial. I love their narrow forms.
I really do like the default Optima in scrivener, and I’ve not changed it. It’s also a narrow font, and has a nice clean elegance.
Poking about this morning I came upon this review by Rick LePage for the documentary Helvetica. I’m more of a Formata guy, myself, but the film sounds like fun for all font freaks…
Nice topic.
My favourite font is Gill Sans. What do you think about this one?
I’m a big fan of Gill Sans. If anything, I probably overuse it.