The first step in breaking away from the tyranny of Times New Roman is simply to pick another font. “But I can’t tell the difference between fonts. How will I ever pick a new one?” Don’t panic. Can you tell the difference between these fonts? If yes, then you can do this. Trust me.
- Make a document for testing fonts. Take two recent documents you’ve made—perhaps a short motion and a letter to client—that have a variety of font styles in them (bold, italic, etc.) and use a mix of characters (alphabetic, numerical, etc.) Print out these documents and set them aside as your “control” set.
- Review the fonts on your system. Purists may hate me for recommending this, but hey. While you shouldn’t use the operating system fonts, most software packages these days (including Word and WordPerfect) come with a giant pile of fonts that get installed with the software. Many of them are dreck, but some are good. So if you haven’t recently, take a moment to go through your font menu and see what’s lurking there. For any font that seems reasonably promising, apply it to all the text in your test document and print out a set (but don’t make any other tweaks or adjustments).
- Compare the new documents to your control set. Now you have a set of test documents showing the different fonts. At least a few will be obviously wrong, like the shade of orange that looked great on the paint chip but not so great on your whole dining room. Throw those out immediately. After that, work it down to maybe three or four samples that you like.
- Use each one for a week. Resist the urge after step 3 to pick the font you like best and go with it. That’s risky, because sometimes a font you like on Monday gets tiresome by Wednesday. If you commit to using it for a week, you’re more likely to discover whether you have the potential for a long-term relationship. Once you send that memo to everyone in the office saying that “From now on, Olde Noisome Roman is our official text font”, it’s harder to unwind.
- Pick the one you like best. There is no right answer. If you’ve compared a number of options and given them a chance to sink in, you’ve done your due diligence. But if you still don’t like any of them, keep reading.
- Find a font you like and try that. Find a book or magazine whose font you like. (Not a newspaper—newspaper fonts are optimized for setting dense blocks of text and don’t look so great in normal legal documents.) Scan the page and upload it to WhatTheFont. WhatTheFont is a terrific free service from MyFonts that will analyze your sample and automatically figure out what font it is.
- Buy the font and try it out. Buy it, install it, apply it to your test document. If you don’t like it, repeat step 6. OK, you’ll be spending a little money, but it will be worth it to find that special font.
- Can’t I just go to a font website and start browsing around? Sure, but it’s not a great idea. There are thousands of fonts available these days and honestly, even I can’t tell the difference between a lot of them. If you’re not a professional designer, it’s more likely you’ll only come away bewildered by choices. But if you are undaunted, here are some sites that carry a wide selection of text fonts:
Adobe Fonts
Font Bureau
FontShop: the online font superstore. Prepare to be overwhelmed.
Lanston Type Company
Linotype
MyFonts
Monotype / Fonts.com: another superstore.
- Arrrgh!! Can’t you just tell me some good fonts? Of course—I’m always happy to impose my taste on others.
Which fonts do you use on your website, including this Comment box?
What any individual user sees is dependent on what fonts are installed on their system. But on Windows, the text is intended to display in Cambria, the headline at the top in Candara, and the menus in Calibri.
On Mac, the text is Georgia, and the headline and menus are Optima.
While all of these fonts work well on the screen, I would not use any of them in a printed document.
Hello, Matthew Butterick:
I read your entire article with great interest! Typography is an overlooked skill.
One very annoying problem for me are fonts that do not distinguish clearly among 0 (zero) and O (capital O), l (lower case el), 1 (one), and I (capital I) — see what I mean? This pretty much eliminates sans serif fonts. As you often state, this is probably a hold-over from old typewriters.
Please mention this in your reasons for selecting a font. As a mathematics writer, this lack of definition is absolutely fatal (of course, I use LaTex-based formatting for mathematical expressions).
That can be a problem with serif fonts too. One feature of monospaced fonts intended for computer programmers is that these characters are always visually distinct. But for lawyers, this problem rarely surfaces so it’s not the best reason to choose or reject a particular font. (I imagine that there are federal statutes out there with enough subparts to yield citations like 32 U.S.C. § 111(l)(1)(I).)
Talk about a hard choice! For filing in California state court, I can only choose among Arial, Courier New, or Times New Roman. I like to use Palatino Linotype for my printed documents, but I’m not sure whether it will be accepted (I’m a new bar admit). Please advise on which is the least of the three evils and/or what alternatives I have.
By the way, I got my current job after I revised my résumé according to advice on this website. Thank you for the excellent tips!
Your choices in California state (or federal) court aren’t that limited. Elsewhere I explain why I don’t recommend Palatino.
Be aware that many experienced attorneys (e.g. your new employer, possibly) persist in believing the urban legend that all court filings must be in Times or Courier. As I’ve said to other new admits, this is not the issue you want to be taking a stand on in your first few months on the job. Though you can always refer your boss to this site and see if it works its magic.
MB, Thanks for your reply.
I understand that it’s better to avoid the overused fonts, but as far as collaboration goes, I know that Word, WP, and Mac have Palatino, so it can be an effective “first step” in replacing Times New Roman, don’t you think? Also, I find it pleasant to look at. It has some familiarity, but in reality Times New Roman has such a monopoly in this area that I would hardly call Palatino overexposed. I’d love to get something like Bembo, but fonts are expensive!
As for my employer, I work in a very small firm and my boss has always appreciated my input so far, so I do feel comfortable bringing it up—although I would never insist on changing the font if he wanted me to keep using TNR. He would probably let me choose another font for my pleadings as long as it is already on our software and will be accepted by the court. My memos to him thus far have been in Palatino, and he has never commented on that.
Does “essentially equivalent” to Times, Courier, or Arial have any special connotation in typography? Since the requirement is fairly new, there aren’t many guides on what falls within the acceptable typefaces. For instance, I was experimenting drafting a motion in Book Antiqua, and I printed a test page with the same words and formatting in BA and Times. To me, the Book Antiqua section looked markedly better, especially in the bold headings, but it seemed that someone who doesn’t pay attention to typography would not consciously notice. (The reader would just think the brief looked nice in general—similar to a guy’s reaction when his gal changes her hairdo). If you know of any resources that are more specific on what is “essentially equivalent” to Times New Roman, or if you have any thoughts, I would be eager to learn of them.
1) Let me give full respect to Palatino. Designer Hermann Zapf’s original design (from 1950) is very lovely. But the version on your computer is not. Like Times New Roman, Palatino has been demolished by poor digital versions and relentless overuse.
If you really like Palatino, try Palatino Nova, Hermann Zapf’s update of the original design (from 2005—55 years (!) after the original). Much better than the one that ships with your operating system.
2) “Fonts are expensive”? You can get the five basic Bembo styles (regular, italic, bold, bold italic, and small caps) for less than $150. They last forever and they’ll improve the appearance of every document you make for basically zero extra effort. Do your other $150 software upgrades deliver that kind of bang for the buck?
3) There aren’t any Cal.App. cases interpreting the “essentially equivalent” language. But if the California judiciary wanted to strictly limit practitioners to three fonts, they would’ve just said so. (Moreover, that reading would make the “essentially equivalent” language meaningless.)
My understanding of “essentially equivalent” is “We want you to pick a font that has the general legibility and length characteristics of Times, Arial, or Courier. We don’t want you to use some far-out thing like Comic Sans, or Ugly Gothic Extra Compressed, or Freeware Font That Looks Like Aliens On Fire, etc.”
MB,
Thanks for helping me sort that out. I raised the issue with my employer, and he was very interested in all my reading about why Times New Roman is a lackluster font for legal documents. He listened to what I had to say, and considered allowing me to submit a motion in a different font. He ultimately decided that the risk of being frowned upon for using a different font outweighed the benefits of improved readability and retention, and I see the wisdom in that decision. I am allowed to submit internal memoranda in any “normal” font of my choice. When it’s time for me to hang out my own shingle, I’ll buy a few of the best literary serif fonts and use them as I please.
I see what you mean as to the interpretation of “essentially equivalent.” That would be my understanding as well, but I don’t know if I would risk sanctions by acting on my read of the rule before doing further research.
And that is what it all comes down to—risk aversion.
I can understand the risk aversion argument (barely) as it applies to court filings. But lawyers create many, many documents that are not court filings.