Courier is a monospace font that resembles the output from a typewriter. The design of the original Courier New typeface was commissioned in the 1950s by IBM for use in typewriters, but they did not protect their rights to the typeface and it was soon a standard font used throughout the typewriter industry. As a monospaced font, it has recently found renewed use in the electronic world in situations where columns of characters must be consistently aligned. It has also become an industry standard for all screenplays to be written in 12 pt Courier or a close variant.

12 point Courier New was also the US State Department's standard typeface until January 2004, when it was replaced with 14 point Times New Roman. Reasons for the change included the desire for a more "modern" and legible font.

Sample

The following paragraph is in Courier or Courier New if the font is available, and if your version of Courier New supports it, Greek, Cyrillic, and IPA characters will display also. If not, a serif font is used:

External link

• US bans time-honoured typeface