The classic monospace typewriter font for court, stenography, and legal typing exams. Courier New is the standard for High Court PA recruitment, SSC Stenographer tests, and district court typing assessments across India.
Font Details
Key specifications used in court and government typing exam software.
Installation
Courier New is pre-installed on all Windows PCs. Here's how to verify and configure it for court typing practice.
Open MS Word and type "Courier New" in the font dropdown. If the text switches to a fixed-width typewriter style, the font is installed — skip to step 4.
Go to C:\Windows\Fonts\ and search for "Courier". You'll find cour.ttf (regular), courbd.ttf (bold), couri.ttf (italic), courbi.ttf (bold italic).
Click the Download button above to save courier-new.ttf. Double-click the file and click Install. The font will be available immediately in all applications.
In MS Word, select Courier New, set size to 12 pt, line spacing to Double (2.0) — court typing exams typically use double spacing to mimic legal document format.
Courier New gives every character the same width — this is intentional for court/legal documents as it makes word count and line count predictable. Stenographers must reach 80–100 WPM in shorthand with 40 WPM transcription in Courier New.
Exam Usage
Courier New is the standard for stenography, court, and legal transcription typing tests across India.
SSC Grade C & D Stenographer posts require Courier New for the transcription test. English steno: 100 WPM (Grade C) or 80 WPM (Grade D) dictation.
Allahabad, Delhi, Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta High Court Personal Assistant recruitment exams mandate Courier New for English transcription.
District and subordinate court steno/PA recruitment typing tests across most states use Courier New as the standard transcription font.
Central Industrial Security Force and Border Security Force stenographer recruitment typing tests use Courier New 12 pt for English transcription.
State Legislative Assembly Reporter and PA recruitment exams specify Courier New for the English transcription component of their typing tests.
Some Central Secretariat Stenographer posts and departmental upgradation tests use Courier New for legacy-format English transcription testing.
Practice & More Fonts
Build your transcription speed in Courier New and explore other exam fonts.
Courier New is a monospaced slab-serif typeface designed by Howard Kettler for IBM typewriters in 1955 and later redrawn by Adrian Frutiger for proportional use. The "New" version was created for Microsoft by Bitstream in the 1980s and has been included with Windows ever since. Its defining characteristic — equal character width — makes it the standard font for legal documents, court transcripts, and coding environments.
Legal documents require predictable formatting: a specific number of characters per line, a specific number of lines per page. Courier New's monospace design guarantees this consistency. When a court says "the transcript must not exceed 25 lines per page at 12 pt double-spaced in Courier New," every typist working on the same document will produce the same layout — regardless of their machine or software version.
SSC Stenographer Grade C requires 100 WPM shorthand dictation followed by transcription. To reach the transcription speed target, practise typing at 45–50 WPM in Courier New — slightly faster than the 40 WPM requirement to give yourself a comfortable buffer when transcribing from your shorthand notes under exam pressure.
Is Courier New monospace? Yes — every character, including the letter 'i' and 'm', occupies exactly the same horizontal space. This is what gives it the typewriter appearance.
What is the free alternative? Liberation Mono (from Red Hat) and Cousine (from Google Fonts) are free, metric-compatible alternatives to Courier New and work identically for typing practice purposes.