When looking at the lower case ‘a’ and ‘g’ you can see that both Bell Mt and Times New Roman are double storey with a closed tail. As you can see the Terminal at the top of the ‘g’ on Bell is more of a softened tear drop lobe where as Times is blunt and straight across. This is the same at the baseline terminal of the ‘a’.

Characteristics

ABCDEF-GHIJKLM-NOPQRSTU-VWXYZabcdefghi-jklnopqrstuvwxyz.

Bell MT

Bell (sometimes known as John Bell) is a Scotch Roman typeface designed in 1788 by Richard Austin. After a short initial period of popularity, the face fell until disuse until it was revived in the 1930s, after which it enjoyed an enduring acceptance as a text face.

History

When looking at the Terminals of Bell MT, you can see that they are tapered serifs, which is the same as Times but in Bell’s case, they appear unrefined as appose to the sharp, more refined serif ’s of Times. The crossbar, seen here on the ‘A’ also looks less refined than that of Times and has also been dropped slightly.

This is the most distinctive letter in the typeface. The ‘Q’ breaks the conventions of the traditional straight tail in a serif, as you can see, compared to Times New Roman above. There are no breaks in the elements of the ‘Q’ and the difference between the thickest and thinnest strokes is high.

Tim

es New

Rom

anB

ell MT

Upper Case ‘Q’