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I'm reading Robert Bringhurst's excellent book The Elements of Typographic Style. He says that when Times New Roman is all you've got you should make the most of its limited virtues but that adding small caps and text figures will help immensely.

What typefaces have small caps and text figures that will look good (meaning match well stylistically) with TNR?

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  • Re. the votes to close as opinion-based: surely good stylistic matching of typefaces (or of any other elements of graphic design) isn't wholly that? Should I clarify by specifying "old-style serif"? Bringhurst calls Times Roman a "pastiche". I'm no expert at typography but I did do some reading before posting and would appreciate some constructive advice.
    – user159870
    Aug 20, 2022 at 19:53

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The Windows version of Times New Roman now includes text figures and small caps.

Stix Two font

I also really recommend STIX Two Text, an open-source font family based on Times New Roman from a consortium of publishers. It has small caps and text figures and looks very good. It's designed better for small text than the standard digital Times New Roman fonts and because it was designed for math and science publishing it has a very extensive character set including Greek.

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    Many thanks. Agreed, STIX Two Text looks very good. I had it installed but had forgotten! Can you point to a diff between its regular caps and its small caps? I thought I spotted a diff in the upper serif of G but it seems to disappear when I zoom in. I can't see any diff between small caps in 40pt & regular caps in 32pt. Also how can I get text figures in TNR? I don't know how to do this on Win 10 Pro, either with Word (2003, 2019) or Libre Office Writer. There's a font "Times Small Caps & Old Style Figures" which gives text figures when you hit the figure keys. Not sure of its provenance.
    – user159870
    Aug 20, 2022 at 19:44
  • Its small caps aren't different in general design, just, well, smaller. I don't have a copy of Bringhurst handy, but I presume he means that being able to use small caps in a font is helpful. Small caps can't easily be used in Word as it doesn't support them, but old-style figures can, see here: leeviathan.com/opentype-features-and-how-to-use-them
    – Copilot
    Aug 20, 2022 at 20:53
  • Not a lot of fonts are small-caps only for support in Word. I think attention has moved to developing for web typography and InDesign. Matthew Butterick's Equity and the free EB Garamond and Juan Pablo del Peral's Alegreya are among the few font families out there left with small caps fonts I've seen.
    – Copilot
    Aug 20, 2022 at 20:59

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