Editing Times New Roman (section)

===Historical background===
[[File:Linotype Textype sample Legibility Group typeface.jpg|thumb|left|Linotype's [[Legibility Group]] typefaces were becoming popular for newspaper printing around the time Times New Roman was created]]
During the nineteenth century, the standard roman types for general-purpose printing were "Modern" or Didone designs,{{efn|Excluding some countries, such as Germany, where [[blackletter]] types were still very popular for extended text into the nineteenth century. For some higher-class literary printing eighteenth-century [[Caslon]] types, or more often [[Modernised Old Style (typeface)|Old Style]] faces in imitation of it, were common in Britain.<ref name="Ovink I">{{cite journal|last1=Ovink|first1=G.W.|title=Nineteenth-century reactions against the didone type model - I|journal=Quaerendo|date=1971|volume=1|issue=2|pages=18–31|doi=10.1163/157006971x00301}}</ref>}} and these were standard in all newspaper printing.{{sfn|Tracy|2003|p=181}}<ref name="Unger 1981">{{cite journal|last1=Unger|first1=Gerard|author-link1=Gerard Unger|title=Experimental No. 223, a newspaper typeface, designed by W.A. Dwiggins|journal=Quaerendo|date=1 January 1981|volume=11|issue=4|pages=302–324|doi=10.1163/157006981X00274}}</ref> Designs in the nineteenth-century style remain a common part of the aesthetic of newspaper printing; for example in 2017 digital typeface designer [[Tobias Frere-Jones]] wrote that he kept his Exchange family, designed for the ''[[Wall Street Journal]]'', based on the nineteenth-century model as it "had to feel like the news."<ref name="Frere-Jones Exchange">{{cite web|last1=Frere-Jones|first1=Tobias|title=Decompiled & Remixed History: The Making of Exchange|url=https://frerejones.com/blog/decompiled-and-remixed-history-the-making-of-exchange|publisher=Frere-Jones Type|access-date=1 August 2017}}</ref> According to Mosley and Williamson the modern-face used by ''The Times'' was Monotype's Series 7 or "Modern Extended", based on typefaces by [[Miller and Richard]].{{sfn|Williamson|1956|p=97}}<ref name=Mosley>{{cite web |last1=Mosley |first1=James |author-link=James Mosley |title=Comments on Typophile thread |url=http://typophile.com/node/49754 |website=Typophile |access-date=27 July 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120612021330/http://typophile.com/node/49754 |archive-date=12 June 2012 }}</ref>

[[File:Times prior newspaper faces.png|thumb|left|Times compared to a modern-face and the wide, monoline Excelsior, part of Linotype's [[Legibility Group]].]]
By the 1920s, some in the publishing industry felt that the modern-face model was too spindly and high-contrast for optimal legibility at the small sizes and punishing printing techniques of newspaper printing.{{sfn|Hutt|1960|p=54}}{{efn|Although it praised many—though not all—aspects of Times' design, so cannot be considered entirely unbiased, a 1937 article by the historian of printing Harry Carter, who had been a draughtsman at the Monotype factory, commented in 1937 that modern faces at 9-point size made for "a very fine engineer's job, but a poor design for reproduction on so small a scale."<ref name="Carter optical">{{cite journal |last1=Carter |first1=Harry |author-link1=Harry Carter (typographer) |title=Optical scale in type founding |journal=Typography |date=1937 |volume=4 |url=https://issuu.com/letterror/docs/harry_carter_optical_scale_in_typefounding |access-date=15 September 2019 |archive-date=8 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308221128/https://issuu.com/letterror/docs/harry_carter_optical_scale_in_typefounding |url-status=dead }}</ref>}} In 1925, the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, Monotype's main competitor, launched a new newspaper typeface called Ionic, which became the first in a series known as the [[Legibility Group]].{{sfn|Hutt|1960|p=55}}<ref name="Three chapters in the development of Clarendon/Ionic typefaces" /> These kept to the nineteenth-century model but greatly reduced the contrast of the letterform.<ref name="Gaultney Balancing" /> The thinnest strokes of the letter were made thicker and strokes were kept as far apart as possible to maximise legibility. It proved extremely successful: [[Allen Hutt]], Monotype's newspaper printing consultant in the late 1930s,<ref name="Allen Hutt Pimlott">{{cite journal |last1=Pimlott |first1=Herbert |title=The Radical Type? G. Allen Hutt, the Communist Party and the politics of journalistic practice |journal=Journalism Practice |date=February 2013 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=81–95 |doi=10.1080/17512786.2012.685556|s2cid=142731478 }}</ref> later noted that it "revolutionised newspaper text setting...within eighteen months it was adopted by 3,000 papers."{{sfn|Hutt|1960|p=55}} Although Times New Roman does not in any way resemble it, [[Walter Tracy]], a prominent type designer who worked on a redesign of Times in the 1970s and wrote an analysis of its design in his book ''Letters of Credit'' (1986), commented that its arrival must at least have influenced the decision to consider a redesign.{{sfn|Tracy|2003|p=194}}

The development of Times New Roman was relatively involved due to the lack of a specific pre-existing model – or perhaps a surfeit of possible choices. Morison wrote in a memo that he hoped for a design that would have relatively sharp serifs, matching the general design of the Times' previous font, but on a darker and more traditional basic structure. Bulked-up versions of Monotype's pre-existing but rather dainty Baskerville and [[Perpetua (typeface)|Perpetua]] typefaces were considered for a basis, and the Legibility Group designs were also examined. (Perpetua, which Monotype had recently commissioned from sculptor [[Eric Gill]] at Morison's urging, is considered a 'transitional' design in aesthetic, although it does not revive any specific model.) Walter Tracy, who knew Lardent, suggested in the 1980s that "Morison did not begin with a clear vision of the ultimate type, but felt his way along."{{sfn|Tracy|2003|p=202}}

[[File:Ludlow Times New Roman Type Specimen (14204771208).jpg|thumb|left|A Ludlow Typograph specimen of Times New Roman Type Specimen from the metal type period. The design was altered in smaller sizes to increase readability, particularly obvious in the widened spacing of the six and eight-point samples at centre right of the diagram.<ref name="Gaultney Balancing">{{cite web|last1=Gaultney|first1=Victor|title=Balancing typeface legibility and economy Practical techniques for the type designer|url=http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=BalanLegEcon|publisher=University of Reading (MA thesis)|access-date=13 October 2017}}</ref> The hollows at the top of upstrokes are also not seen in the standard digitisations.]]
Morison's biographer [[Nicolas Barker]] has written that Morison's memos of the time wavered over a variety of options before it was ultimately concluded that Plantin formed the best basis for a condensed font that could nonetheless be made to fill out the full size of the letter space as far as possible.{{sfn|Barker|1972|pp=286-302}} (Morison ultimately conceded that Perpetua, which had been his pet project, was 'too basically circular' to be practical to condense in an attractive way.{{efn|Dreyfus shows proofs of the experimental recut of Perpetua with shortened descenders to allow tighter linespacing.{{sfn|Dreyfus|1973|p=166}} Morison later commented that "it stared at the reader".}})

Walter Tracy and James Moran, who discussed the design's creation with Lardent in the 1960s, found that Lardent himself had little memory of exactly what material Morison gave him as a specimen to use to design the typeface, but he told Moran that he remembered working on the design from archive photographs of vintage type; he thought this was a book printed by [[Christophe Plantin]], the sixteenth-century printer whose printing office the Plantin-Moretus Museum preserves and is named for.{{sfn|Tracy|2003|p=196}} Moran and Tracy suggested that this actually might have been the same specimen of type from the Plantin-Moretus Museum that Plantin had been based on,{{sfn|Tracy|2003|p=199}} and Barker notes that this is likely to be correct, as although Plantin is based on a Granjon type in the collection of the museum, that specific type was only acquired by Plantin's heirs after his death,<ref name="Vervliet2008" /> and Times and Plantin both copy an 'a' not added to the type after Plantin's death.<ref name="Starling Burgess: No Type Designer" /> The sharpened serifs somewhat recall Perpetua, although Morison's stated reason for them was to provide continuity with the previous Didone design and the crispness associated with the ''Times''' printing; he also cited as a reason that sharper serifs looked better after [[Stereotype (printing)|stereotyping]] or printed on a [[Rotary printing press|rotary press]].{{sfn|Crutchley|1990|p=129}} Although Morison may not have literally drawn the design, his influence on its concept was sufficient that he felt he could call it "my one effort at designing a font" in a letter to [[Daniel Berkeley Updike]], a prominent American printing historian with whom he corresponded frequently.{{efn|Spelling here, and elsewhere in the article, modernised to avoid confusion. Morison wrote "fount", the usual spelling in British English at the time.<ref name="Updike Morison Letters" />}} Morison's several accounts of his reasoning in designing the concept of Times New Roman were somewhat contradictory and historians of printing have suggested that in practice they were mostly composed to rationalise his pre-existing aesthetic preferences: after Morison's death Allen Hutt went so far as to describe his unsigned 1936 article on the topic<ref name="Monotype Recorder: The Changing Newspaper" /> as "rather odd...it can only be regarded as a piece of Morisonian mystification".{{sfn|Hutt|1970|p=264}}

Lardent's original drawings are according to Rhatigan lost, but photographs exist of his drawings. Rhatigan comments that Lardent's originals show "the spirit of the final type, but not the details."<ref name="Time and Times again">{{cite web|last1=Rhatigan|first1=Dan|title=Time and Times again|url=http://ultrasparky.org/archives/2011/09/time_and_times_.html|website=ultrasparky.org|access-date=28 July 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Rhatigan |first1=Dan |title=My assumption that the Lardent.... |url=https://typo.social/@BijouType/109442722158324807 |website=Mastodon |access-date=28 May 2023 |date=2 December 2022 |quote=My assumption that the Lardent drawings for TNR are lost comes from two things:  1) Knowing for sure that no trace of them existed at Salfords, much to the company’s dismay  2) Robin Nicholas’ own frustration at never finding a trace of them, or hearing about them from anyone at the Times.   I suspect that the reproduction of the drawings in “printing of the Times” may have been an enlargement of one of the reference photos originally made of Lardent’s drawings.}}</ref> The design was adapted from Lardent's large drawings by the Monotype drawing office team in [[Salfords]], [[Surrey]], which worked out spacing and simplified some fine details.{{sfn|Tracy|2003|p=202}}<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Savoie |first1=Alice |title=The women behind Times New Roman |journal=Journal of Design History |date=1 December 2020 |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=209–224 |doi=10.1093/jdh/epaa025}}</ref><ref>Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/nW2WAguIIAI Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20200622195559/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW2WAguIIAI Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web |last1=Ross |first1=Fiona |last2=Savoie |first2=Alice |author1-link=Fiona Ross (type designer) |title=Women in Type |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW2WAguIIAI |website=YouTube |date=14 September 2018 |publisher=[[ATypI]] |access-date=13 October 2021}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Savoie |first1=Alice |title=Women in type: the contribution of type drawing offices to twentieth century type-making with Alice Savoie |url=https://vimeo.com/460376476 |website=Vimeo |date=21 September 2020 |access-date=13 October 2021}}</ref><ref>Archived at [https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/mA2ham646Eg Ghostarchive]{{cbignore}} and the [https://web.archive.org/web/20211110202526/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA2ham646Eg&gl=US&hl=en Wayback Machine]{{cbignore}}: {{cite web |last1=Savoie |first1=Alice |title=Alice Savoie : Présentation du projet de recherche Women in Type |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA2ham646Eg |website=YouTube |date=23 June 2021 |publisher=CRAL - Centre de Recherches sur les arts et le langage |access-date=13 October 2021}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Further changes were made after manufacturing began (the latter a difficult practice, since new punches and matrices had to be machined after each design change).{{sfn|Tracy|2003|p=202}}

Morison continued to develop a close connection with the ''Times'' that would last throughout his life. Morison edited the History of the Times from 1935 to 1952, and in the post-war period, at a time when Monotype effectively stopped developing new typefaces due to [[Social history of the United Kingdom (1945–present)#Age of Austerity|pressures of austerity]], took a post as editor of the ''[[Times Literary Supplement]]'' which he held from 1945 to 1948.<ref name="oxdnb">{{cite book|last=Carter|first=H. G.|others=rev. David McKitterick|title=Morison, Stanley Arthur (1889–1967)|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2004|volume=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography}}</ref> Times New Roman remained Morison's only type design; he designed a type to be issued by the [[Bauer Type Foundry]] of Frankfurt but the project was abandoned due to the war. Morison told his friend [[Ellic Howe]] that the test type sent to him just before the war was sent to the government to be "analysed in order that we should know whether the Hun is hard up for lead or antimony or tin."{{sfn|Crutchley|1990|p=123}} [[Brooke Crutchley]], Printer to Cambridge University,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Carter |first1=Sebastian |author1-link=Sebastian Carter |title=Obituary: Brooke Crutchley |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/sep/05/guardianobituaries.booksobituaries |website=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=27 March 2022 |language=en |date=5 September 2003}}</ref> recorded in his diary a more informal discussion of the design's origins from a conversation in August 1948:<blockquote>SM thought that [[John Dreyfus|Dreyfus]] might in time be able to design a mathematical font but he would first have to get out of his system a lot of personal ideas and searching for effects. He, Morison, had to do all this before he could design the Times font. [[Rampant Lions Press|Will Carter]] came in to consult M about a new type for the ''[[Radio Times]]'', on which he had been invited to experiment. M said that the answer was really Times and that if he worked out the problem from the bottom that was the sort of answer he would get...Will has been experimenting with Plantin, but it doesn't come out well when printed from plates on rotaries, perhaps a face based on Plantin would do the trick. M said that was just how he got to Times.{{sfn|Crutchley|1990|p=129}}</blockquote>