Last updated on 25th Jan. 2020
This post follows up on an earlier Facebook post, https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/2685157395034154 dated 11th Dec. 2019. Its contents are given below.
Should I use Times New Roman 12 or Times New Roman 11 font for main text in my next book - "Indian Computer Science (CS) & Information Technology (IT) Academic Reform (Past) Activism Blog Book"?
I have started working on my next book which essentially will include important posts from my https://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/ blog and which (book) I have tentatively titled as "Indian Computer Science (CS) & Information Technology (IT) Academic Reform (Past) Activism Blog Book". I will have both ebook and paperback print versions. But I expect to print only a very, very few (2 or 3) print copies. The ebook will be the important one which I will put up on self.gutenberg.org and archive.org and which hopefully will get incorporated into global ebook libraries like worldebooklibrary.org. That should ensure some longevity for the ebook even if very few read it.
It is a very niche interest book and so very few people will want to read it. But it may be very useful to some of that very few who are into activism of the kind the book/blog covers.
The question is what font size should I use for the main text in the book (font will be Times New Roman).
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Basic_Book_Design/Font#Font_Size says, "Times Roman, look best in 11 or 12 points". Note that there are subtle differences between Times Roman and Times New Roman fonts but I think for the discussion on this post, they do not matter.
BTW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman says, "Although no longer used by The Times, Times New Roman is still very common in book and general printing.[3] It has become one of the most popular and influential typefaces in history and a standard typeface on desktop computers.[4][5]"
[Wiki Refs:
3: Dreyfus, John (1973). "The Evolution of Times New Roman". The Penrose Annual. 66: 165–174.
4: Farey, Dave (2014). "A Life and Times, Part 1". Ultrabold (16): 16–25.
5: Farey, Dave (2014). "A Life and Times, Part 2". Ultrabold (15): 3–13.]
For most of my documents work in software industry, right from around 1985, I have used Times New Roman as my standard font, and I think I typically used 12 as the font size.
For my previous books, I wanted to err on the side of large font for the main text and so used Times New Roman 12.
One of the issues with Times New Roman 12 is that the print version becomes more expensive as it runs into more pages. The ebook version will also run into more pages but no additional expense comes into play as it will be free download. But the higher number of pages may make it more intimidating for readers.
This book is a technical one. So I think Times New Roman 11 will be acceptable. That will reduce the number of pages in the book (both ebook and paperback).
So I am seriously considering using Times New Roman 11 instead of Times New Roman 12 for the main text in this book. I wanted to check with readers whether they have any suggestions on this, and so this post. Thanks.
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A correspondent wrote over email (and was OK with sharing):
Dear Ravi - Good to know you are working on your next book!
Regarding the font size, there is hardly any size difference between Times New Roman 11 and 12. However, the 12 appears little bolder (not fully bold) than 11. So, book purpose I think 11 would be better, especially for the print book. For the ebook, it shouldn't make much difference because these days pretty much all reading tools have zoom feature built into it. So a reader can zoom in, if he/she finds the font size 11 to be harder to read.
This is my 2 cents!
Good luck with your new book project!
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I responded (slightly edited):
Thanks a ton --name-snipped-- for your valuable view on the font size and your encouragement for the book.
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=== end Facebook post contents ==============
23rd Jan. 2020:
Another suggestion I received which I have not mentioned above, was to consider size 10 font also. Further suggestion was to print test page(s) with same contents in different candidate fonts and then see what is appropriate for my needs.
Later I read that some technical papers are done in size 10 font. http://marathon.csee.usf.edu/~sarkar/IEEEformat.html says that the standard IEEE CS-Press format specifies: "Normal text is to be single-spaced in 10-point Times or Times Roman (or similar font), with 12-point interline spacing, in the two-column format."
I had decided on Times New Roman as my font as I wanted to play safe and go with a tried-and-tested font for this book. So the candidate fonts were sizes 12, 11 and 10 Times New Roman.
I had got caught up in some other matters since the first half of December when the above Facebook post was put up, and so was able to get around to do the test printing only yesterday.
I prepared three versions of a two A5 page Word document with same content (excluding font size message), with the above mentioned three font sizes (Times New Roman 12, 11 and 10). I then used Print To PDF to print these two A5 pages of each document on an A4 sheet. I took care to ensure that there was no zoom up or down selection in the printing dialog and so I presume that the actual size of the text with the selected font got printed in the 3 PDF files of 1 A4 size page.
Yesterday I printed these three PDF files using a Puttaparthi laser printer shop's services.
Given below are pics I took of these pages using my low cost LYF phone. The first two pics below show part-page comparison of size 12 with size 11, and of size 11 with size 10. The third and fourth pic shows part-page comparison of size 12, 11 and 10 fonts in the same pic with 6 cms height of each part and 9 cms height of each part.
[To open pic in larger resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]
Pics below show the full 2 A5 sized pages on single A4 page for font size 12, 11 and 10. The pages look whiter than in the pics above but the pages are the same. The whiter look is due to the pics below being taken in rather bright sunlight whereas the above pics were taken indoors (under tubelights).
Looking at the pages directly (not above pics) shows that Times New Roman Font size 10 is also quite comfortably readable. I think readers from technical field of Computer Science and Information Technology will find it comfortably readable.
However, I intend to send the printed (paperback) book copy to the (Indian) Union Minister of Human Resource Development (who is overall incharge of UGC and AICTE, the main higher education regulatory authorities for Computer Science and Information Technology fields in India), (Indian) Union Minister for Information Technology and perhaps the (Indian) Prime Minister too. I think I may also send it to few state chief ministers (Andhra Pradesh, my current state, and Maharashtra, my former state). I don't know whether the ministers or his/her key support staff will give it a look or not. But they may! In the covering letter, I will point out a few important articles which can be understood by non-technical readers too, and request him/her/them to read it. For such non-technical readers, I think font size 10 would seem to be unusually small, as the letters and requests they get from citizens may be in larger font size. Note that I will use font size 12 for my covering letter, which is the standard font size I use for such letters. So I think font size 11 is a good compromise choice. It should be OK for such non-technical readers and since it is one size smaller than 12, it will slightly reduce the number of pages in the book.
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25th Jan. 2020
Line Spacing
I use Microsoft Word as my document creator/editor. The line spacing that I use in it is controlled by "Line spacing:" field in Paragraph->Indents & Spacing tab. The value it shows in my document is: Multiple At 1.15. https://medium.com/@mattsamberg/line-spacing-explained-9aecda41f48d explains "In Word, Times New Roman actually has about 2 points of extra white space built in. So, single spacing for a 12-point font is actually 14 points per line, and double spacing is 28 points per line."
The document also states, "When you go into the Paragraph formatting panel in Word, there are six settings: Single, 1.5 lines, Double, At least, Exactly, and Multiple. Single, 1.5 lines, Double, and Multiple are all straightforward: the line spacing is 14 points, 21 points, 28 points, or 14x points per line."
The Multiple At 1.15 spacing option that my document has currently for the basic text style (Normal) makes the line spacing for Times New Roman 12 font, as per my understanding of above document, 14 * 1.15 = 16.1 points!
So that perhaps means it is Times New Roman 12 point on 16 point interline spacing.
This Multiple At 1.15 spacing selection is the default line spacing for Microsoft Word installation on my PC. [I use an old copy of Microsoft Word 2007 which I am comfortable with and has served my basic needs well.]
I have decided to use Times New Roman 11 as my Normal style (main text font) for the book with the default Multiple At 1.15 line spacing of Word. I presume that Times New Roman 11 would also be having some points extra line space built-in (in the font) say 1.8 points extra space. Multiple line spacing at 1.15 is: 11 * 1.15 = 12.65. So it would be 11 point Times New Roman with interline spacing of around 14.5 points.
Even if we remove the built-in space, we get interline spacing of 12.65. I have given below a screenshot of Word showing the 1.15 line spacing selection.
To conclude, 11 on 12.65 Times New Roman font (without counting any built-in line spacing in the font) is what I will be using in the book for the main text in the book (both paperback and ebook versions).
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25th Jan. 2020
Line Spacing
I use Microsoft Word as my document creator/editor. The line spacing that I use in it is controlled by "Line spacing:" field in Paragraph->Indents & Spacing tab. The value it shows in my document is: Multiple At 1.15. https://medium.com/@mattsamberg/line-spacing-explained-9aecda41f48d explains "In Word, Times New Roman actually has about 2 points of extra white space built in. So, single spacing for a 12-point font is actually 14 points per line, and double spacing is 28 points per line."
The document also states, "When you go into the Paragraph formatting panel in Word, there are six settings: Single, 1.5 lines, Double, At least, Exactly, and Multiple. Single, 1.5 lines, Double, and Multiple are all straightforward: the line spacing is 14 points, 21 points, 28 points, or 14x points per line."
The Multiple At 1.15 spacing option that my document has currently for the basic text style (Normal) makes the line spacing for Times New Roman 12 font, as per my understanding of above document, 14 * 1.15 = 16.1 points!
So that perhaps means it is Times New Roman 12 point on 16 point interline spacing.
This Multiple At 1.15 spacing selection is the default line spacing for Microsoft Word installation on my PC. [I use an old copy of Microsoft Word 2007 which I am comfortable with and has served my basic needs well.]
I have decided to use Times New Roman 11 as my Normal style (main text font) for the book with the default Multiple At 1.15 line spacing of Word. I presume that Times New Roman 11 would also be having some points extra line space built-in (in the font) say 1.8 points extra space. Multiple line spacing at 1.15 is: 11 * 1.15 = 12.65. So it would be 11 point Times New Roman with interline spacing of around 14.5 points.
Even if we remove the built-in space, we get interline spacing of 12.65. I have given below a screenshot of Word showing the 1.15 line spacing selection.
To conclude, 11 on 12.65 Times New Roman font (without counting any built-in line spacing in the font) is what I will be using in the book for the main text in the book (both paperback and ebook versions).
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