I'd like to add Times New Roman to this list.

Well.

You can't.

Fuck off you facist oppressor!

And I WILL add Helvetica Medium.

I had a class on typography last year. Highlights:

Times New Roman and Helvetica Black are the meat and potatoes of newsprint because they are nice and functional -easy on the eyes. Garamond and Tahoma are often used in illustrations and such, but not body text. Anything without serifs supposedly sucks for readability on paper. We read letters through shape cognition, so all those ascenders, descenders and serifs help us churn through text. This is also why all caps sucks ass. We only really look at the top half of lowercase letters, and all caps makes our brain vibrate with dread.

FUN FACT: Serifs originated when chiseling letters into stone became commonplace, they sort of hid the nasty ends.

^ Very true. I hate Times on the 'puter as much as anybody, probably more, but it only takes one time trying to read a paperback that was printed at 7 or 8 points in Tahoma or Arial or some such to realize why Times is so ubiquitous in print.

As far as reading by shape, I remember seeing a paragraph that was diliberately created so that not a single word was spelled even remotely correctly, but due to the word shapes and context was still perfectly legible. In fact, if you read it fast enough, you might not have even noticed the spellings. Was really interesting. Can't find it now, though.

I believe you are referring to this.

That's the one... Thanks!

Wow, that shit is just nutty, and I would have never believed it was true if I just didn't see that with my own personal eyes. Thx lownotes, now I have even bteter wyas to psis off my boss.