An Examination of Character Fonts in the CBS and USA
This paper examines the characters and fonts used in the Killian documents provided by CBS and USA Today. This paper shows clearly it would be impossible to produce the documents using just Microsoft Word and the ‘default’ font (True Type Times New Roman) that comes with Microsoft Word. This paper further shows the subtle variations between the Killian documents and what you produce with a modern laser printer.
Three of the documents are referred to here. They are located at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardaugust18.pdf
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/BushGuardmay4.pdf
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-09-09bushdocs.pdf
1. Typewriter vs. Word Processing Fonts
As time progresses, our technology does too. It is interesting to see how there are differences between older typewriting fonts and the fonts we use today. There are a number of sources on the World Wide Web where you go to see fonts including those from actual typewriters on line and Web designers use them. I used these and my copy of Microsoft Word to look at a number of typewriter fonts and word processing fonts to compare with the Killian memos.
The typewriter font I worked with in this paper is called “Typewriter New Roman.” It is available in a number of Web designer sites. The Font section of SimplyTheBest.net lists the Typewriter New Roman and attributes it to Johan Holmdahl. Mr. Holmdahl has scanned fonts from many typewriters and makes them available on own Web site: free-typewriter-fonts.com. If you navigate to http://www.free-typewriter-fonts.com/Fonts.html you see the following page:
Figure 1: The
free-typewriter-fonts.com site has many Typewriter fonts.
Using this site, you can view and download these actual typewriter fonts and actually register them as fonts on your computer.
1) First to view a particular font, click on the pull down control shown at step 1) above to display the alphabetized list of fonts. The font we’re interested in is called “Typewriter New Roman” so scroll down click on it.
2) When you select a font, sample characters appear at the right.
3) Once selected, you can download the font in a ZIP file to your computer.
4) The operator of this site explains more about the site and offers to help people if they wish to upload a font from your typewriter as explained in the FAQ circled at item 4).
2. How to get and load the typewriter font into Microsoft Word
After clicking “download” A ZIP file called “tnr.zip” containing the “Typewriter New Roman” font is available for download to your computer. Save this ZIP file on your hard drive click it open and save the file “Typenr___.ttf” file font from the ZIP file into your Windows \Fonts directory, generally: C:\Windows\Fonts. Doing this on Windows 2000, XP and above installs the font on your computer and makes it available.
Now you can use the font in Microsoft Word.
Figure 2: Examples
of the word “
Above in Figure 2 are three copies of the word “
1) The first line is in the normal “True Type” Times New Roman font that comes with Microsoft Word.
2) The second is the “Typewriter New Roman” font just downloaded.
3) The third is a condensed bold version of the new font.
To make the text appear as in 3) use: To do this in Microsoft Word, use:
Format | Fonts | Character Spacing |
A dialog window as shown in Figure 3:
+
Figure 3: Adjusting
Spacing and Kerning settings
You need to go into the font properties and turn on
condensed by 1 pixel. For this example I only turned on “Condensed”
spacing. But as shown, you can also turn
on Kerning as well.
3. How Various Font matches up with the Killian documents from CBS.
I downloaded the Killian document for
Figure 4: Comparing
fonts with the Killian document
In Figure 4, the square section on the top of Figure 4 is a
portion of the
Notice the following In Figure 4, the lower case “L” and the “A” are magnified on the right. Notice how
· The lower case “L” is very square in the Killian document (top) and in the Typewriter example (Bottom). The top serif juts directly out horizontally. But the lower case “L” in the Microsoft True Type font has a short pointed top, not a jutting top.
· Notice too how the back of the “a” slants back to the left at the top in both the Killian document and Typewriter font. But in the Microsoft Word True Type font the back of the “a” is more erect with a curvature that begins near the top.
I became interested in the documents originally because of the lowercase “L” and the number One’s throughout the document. I originally noticed the “ones” looked very different from the Times New Roman font. And as we see it is different. What I conjectured at first was that someone was typing these L’s instead of One’s – as would be the case if you were had learned to type in the early 1960s when typewriters commonly did not have a “1” key. At that time you used the lower case “L” instead because that’s all you had.
Some fonts bear a marked difference between the “L” and the “one.”
This is true in the Courier font families: “187th in
There differences in the “Ones,” the lower case “L” the “a”,
the “I” and a number of other characters ear mark the font as being very
similar to the “Typewriter New Roman” font.
Additionally note that
- As can be seen from Figure 4 the Word processor Times New Roman font produces a “hard edged” character where as the typewriter font and the Killian document have soft-edged characters.
- The dots over the letters “i” and “j” are hard thick where as the dots in Times New Roman tend to be much lighter.
These last two points indicate the difference in technology from earlier typewriter printing with what you can now do using a common modern PC Word processor and have been able to produce from about 1985 onward. Impact printing can not create the hard edge and small dots. Laser printing does of course due to technological advances.
Conclusion #1: The CBS Killian document was not created with the more recent True Type version of Times called Times New Roman you would find as the default in Microsoft Word.
Conclusion #2: The Killian document was created with an earlier font very much like the Typewriter font we just downloaded and tested.
4. Character spacing and kerning
Using the new downloaded font, it takes considerable effort to try to match the spacing and kerning of the Killian documents. As a number of Web sites have suggested, it is easy to get “close” using the Microsoft Word Times New Roman font. But it could be difficult to make the character alignment exact, especially with a scanned typewriter font such as the one we are using.
One question I would have is that if you acquire a font such as the Typewriter New Roman and it’s not proportional wouldn’t it be many hours easier just to use it the way it comes?
5. Character presentation differences in the Killian documents.
The Killian documents show differences in individual
characters throughout. This is not
something you normally want or see from a Word Processed document. Here’s the
word “
And here is the word from the CBS Killian document. :
Note that in the Killian document, each lower case “a” is slightly different from the others. The first is heavy. The second is lighter. And third is moderately light but the smudged on the left. In fact individual letters appear to be slightly different every where they are used in the entire document.
Here’s the word from in our typewriter font Typewriter New Roman in Microsoft Word:
No matter how many times you type the “a” into Microsoft Word, or what font you use, it comes out looking exactly the same. But not so on the Killian documents from CBS.
Here is the 4th line from paragraph 1:
Notice that the two ee’s in “feedback” appear to be misaligned
in the Killian document.
The bottom section of the first “e” seems more “ink filled” than the second. But on the whole, the first “e” seems to be slightly above the second. However no matter how many times you type the “e” into Microsoft Word it vertically aligns identically.
For another example of side-by-side characters, let’s look
at the “7s” in the ZIP code in the Killian BushGuardMay4 document.
There is a slight variation in the bottom of each”7” in this line and the top of the third “7” is below . Here are the same characters typed into this document using Times New Roman:
77027
The tops and bottoms of the 7’s are exactly even in the Word processed version. But in the Killian document, the top of the third “7” is clearly below the top of the first and second. And the second “7” is clearly taller than the first.
Conclusion #3: Character heaviness and smudge variations in the CBS Killian document can not be accounted for in Microsoft Word.
Conclusion #4: The slight character print variations and misalignments can not be accounted for using Microsoft Word alone.
Thus the position of those 7’s look “hammered” as if produced by a mechanical device.
6. Ways You Could Try to Produce the Killian Documents
From the previous discussion you can see you would need more than just Microsoft Word to produce these documents and make them “look like” the Killian documents. To do this you would you would need to perform a number of tasks using Word itself, an alternate font, some tool like Photoshop and possibly other software. These tasks would require a variety of skills and work including:
6.1 Obtaining a font that looks exactly like the Killian font:
· As we have seen you need to start by obtaining a typewriter style font. It would be similar to but not exactly the same as the “Typewriter New Roman” font we obtained. This is very close to the Killian document font but not exactly like it.
· To create such a font you could use a scanner and font generation software. Or you could go to the Webmaster at the site I used, free-typewriter-fonts.com and send him a copy of the characters from your typewriter or typing element of choice. Or you can search around and try to find the exact font. Some forensic experts may have examples that you could download for less than $1,000.
6.2 Setting the font metrics in Microsoft Word:
· Once you download the font, you have to set it up to work as a proportional font, by adjusting the condensed mode and the kerning.
· This might take very little time if you set the font up to condense and kern it properly. The Microsoft Times New Roman comes this way, but to make the “Killian font” do the same might take considerable time.
6.3 Producing the document:
· Then you would use this to produce the document.
· Now you are ready to put the document through a graphical modification process to produce misalignments and character differences.
There are three production methods to come up with these subtle effects.
6.3.1 Graphic Editing. A procedure for this is as follows:
· Use a Scanning tool to read the document into digital graphic form (or take a picture directly from the .DOC file from the document using a tool the “Print Screen” button.).
· Creating character variations. With better than journeyman skills you could use a program like PhotoShop to try to create the subtle variations in each version of individual characters. Photoshop and other programs like Paint Shop Pro comes tools to create effects such as Dilate, Erode, Blur, Sharpen. Each of these tools takes time to use. You would use features like the “Dodging” to lighten some characters. Then change this tool to darken others. Darken up the dots over the “j” and “i” and adding a heavy ink look to fill the bottoms of some of the e’s would be very time consuming, probably on the order of one to three days per document.
· You could also probably do the tiny cut and paste operations to set the vertical alignment of characters slightly off register though this is very hard even with Photoshop and would take an expert. To adjust the vertical alignment of the two e’s to give them these very subtle height differences. You would try to “move” individual of the letters up and down by what in PhotoShop will be less than a pixel in many cases. You would have to play with intricate gradations and adjust the background paper to match. In doing this you quite possibly would end up with visible pixilation. It might literally take weeks to do this using graphic editing.
6.3.2 Photocopy techniques: You might be able to use some photographic or Xerographic (photocopy) technique that produces a mottling effect one that makes the characters appear different on different parts of the page. However again, you run into the problem of side-by-side vertically misaligned characters like the two e’s or the 7’s. Trying to make distinct versions of each “a” and each “o” and each “b” and so on through out the document would be I think quite time consuming. If the document came from Word processor, the dots over “i” would be much lighter. They would not darken up the way they do in the Killian document.
6.3.3 Print the document using a typewriter: This seems like the cheapest alternative since the typewriter is mechanical will automatically produce subtle variations to match the Killian document.
7. Summary
This paper:
1) Calls attention to Inconsistencies in type face between the fonts used in the Killian memos and modern Word processor fonts such as the TrueType Times Roman font found in Microsoft Word and the fonts used in the documents.
2) Shows ear marking such as lower case “L” and “a.” in the Killian memos are not present in the Word default font but are present in a typewriter.
3) Refers to instances where the Killian memos exhibit appear to have printed using a mechanical device which would produce variations such as darkness and smudging and inconsistencies in how characters appear that are characteristic of typewriters.
4) Shows where the Killian memos have vertical alignment variations as would be likely with a mechanical device but impossible with a laser printer.
The smudging, darkness, and vertical alignment are far easier to produce using an actual typewriter.
Richard Katz,