Typewriter fonts
Monospaced and slab-serif faces modeled on typewriters, from clean screenplay type to worn, inky letters for documents and props.
Dear Sir or Madam
A typewriter could move the paper by only one fixed distance per keystroke, so every character, from i to m, had to occupy the same width. Designers gave narrow letters broad slab serifs to fill their space and squeezed the wide ones, and that compromise produced the unmistakable typewriter look: monospaced, slab-footed, even in stroke.
Typewriter fonts now come in two temperaments. Clean ones reproduce the design of the typeface on the machine, as if printed with a fresh ribbon. They are practical: screenplays and manuscripts are still formatted in this style, and it suits forms, labels and anything that should look like plain information. Distressed ones reproduce the result on paper, with uneven inking, filled-in counters and letters knocked slightly out of line. Those are for atmosphere: case files, letters in a period drama, zines, anything that should feel typed by a person on a particular day.
Not every typewriter-style face is strictly monospaced. A few proportional slab serifs keep the flavor while reading more comfortably, and they are noted below. For text you expect people to read at length, prefer a clean design; keep the worn ones for titles and short documents.
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Courier Prime
A monospaced typewriter face made for screenplays, in Regular and Bold with cursive italics.
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Special Elite
Mimics the type of two typewriter models, with blotted, bitten edges as if struck through a worn ribbon; one weight.
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Cutive Mono
Thin, even strokes with flat slab serifs and wide feet on i, j, l and r, drawn from several classic typewriter faces.
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Cutive
A proportional slab serif modeled on classic typewriter faces, in one Regular weight.
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Lekton
Thin, narrow letters drawn after the type of Olivetti typewriters, in Regular, Italic and Bold.
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Nixie One
A hairline slab serif that mixes neon-tube signage with typewriter letterforms.
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Josefin Slab
Thin geometric slab letters that borrow some typewriter attributes; proportional, on a weight axis from Thin to Bold.
Samples load a basic Latin subset of each family. Every family here carries an open license; its page states the terms and offers the original files.
Questions about typewriter fonts
Which font is used for screenplays?
Screenplays are conventionally set in a 12-point monospaced typewriter face, so that one page corresponds to roughly a minute of screen time. One family below was made for that purpose.
Are all typewriter fonts monospaced?
Most are, since real typewriters were. Some modern designs keep the slab serifs and flavor but use proportional widths, which read more easily in paragraphs.
Can I use these typewriter fonts commercially?
Yes. All but one are under the SIL Open Font License, and one is under the Apache License 2.0. Both permit commercial use, including books, films and merchandise.