A cynical typeface

Very cold. Very snowy. Will I ever go outside again? I don’t know.

I missed Samuel terribly this afternoon. Karin took him to the doctor, who hinted that his social graces aren’t up to snuff.

“Does he see people?” the doctor asked.

“Hardly ever,” said Karin. “We are in the midst of a pandemic.”

The doctor may have had a point, though, since Samuel was shrieking.

Afterward, Karin took Samuel to the library and got him some books about Puffin Rock. That cheered him right up.

Bear with me, now, as I discuss one of my rather solitary interests. Last night, I found this sinvergüenza free font: Times Newer Roman,
a font that looks like Times New Roman, except each character is 5–10% wider.

Times Newer Roman is designed to add length to any academic paper that has page requirements and also requires the use of Times New Roman. Times Newer Roman is actually an altered version of Nimbus Roman No. 9 L (1), a free and open-source font meant to mimic the size and look of the original Times New Roman typeface. The few minor changes that have been made are in pursuit of widening the letters and the spaces between the letters without changing their vertical heights at all. This means that a paper with a given word count will have more length when rendered in Times Newer Roman instead of the old Times New Roman – hopefully without being noticeable to whoever’s job it is to grade the paper.

Plenty of typefaces run afoul of intellectual property standards: witness the many unauthorized “clones” of Times New Roman, Helvetica, Palatino, etc. But this is the first typeface I’ve encountered that was designed for wickedness.