R help - Nov 2025 - Best practice for copying statistical output from RStudio to Word using Times New Roman

> Colleagues
> 
> I am writing an article using Microsoft Word for a journal that requires
> Times New Roman for all text (including tables and statistical outputs).
> However, copying console output from RStudio (e.g., summary(lm())) into
Word
> retains the RStudio monospace font, and Word does not automatically convert
> it to Times New Roman. Manually restyling each pasted block is
> time-consuming and error-prone.
> 
> s there a recommended workflow for preserving proper alignment while
> achieving Times New Roman text formatting when transferring statistical
> results from RStudio into Word?
> 
> System:
> Windows 11
> R 4.5.1
> RStudio 2024.12.0+
> 
> Thanks for any guidance or best practices.
> 
> Best regards,
> Thomas Subia
> 
Rmarkdown, with this in the YAML:

mainfont: Times New Roman

It might be necessary to specify

output: 
  pdf_document:
    latex_engine: xelatex
mainfont: Times New Roman 

If necessary one could specify 

output:
  word_document

but I?ve had less success with that (in placing figures, for example).	

In graphs and so on, it might be necessary to specify the font in the code that
creates them.

-Richard

---
Richard Sherman
Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Science
Asian University for Women
https://asian-university.org


	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Thomas -

Times is a proportionally spaced font, that means e.g. letters like i and m, or
numbers like 1 and 0 have different widths, thus the width of text depends on
its contents, not just the number of letters. You cannot align such a font on a
regular grid - or rather, if you do by moving the individual letters around, the
result looks horrible.

There are other mono-spaced fonts that have times-like serifs, but they all look
more like Courier, rather than Times itself. RStudio and other code environments
use monospaced fonts for layout since it is easy to compute, and in many
contexts the number of spaces are not just for positioning text but have
semantic meaning.

Creating tables in Times is certainly possible, and the Coefficients: part of
the lm() output is indeed a right-aligned table with one header row and one data
row. However, the _only_ way you can align text in a Times font for a table or
similar is by using tabs - standard-, left-aligned, centred, right-aligned, or
decimal tabs, whatever your layout requires. You can't emulate this by
pushing things around with spaces, this can't align precisely when you are
using a proportionally spaced font.

This leaves you with three options:
 - use tabs, not spaces for tables (that's the right way);
 - use a monospaced font, like Courier (and fight with your publisher);
 - declare these parts to be figures, not text (which they are, since you are
looking to control their spatial arrangement.

Tabs.
You need to use tabs for tables.


Cheers,
Boris
> On Nov 23, 2025, at 03:03, Richard Sherman <rss.pdx at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> [You don't often get email from rss.pdx at gmail.com. Learn why this is
important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ]
>
>> Colleagues
>>
>> I am writing an article using Microsoft Word for a journal that
requires
>> Times New Roman for all text (including tables and statistical
outputs).
>> However, copying console output from RStudio (e.g., summary(lm())) into
Word
>> retains the RStudio monospace font, and Word does not automatically
convert
>> it to Times New Roman. Manually restyling each pasted block is
>> time-consuming and error-prone.
>>
>> s there a recommended workflow for preserving proper alignment while
>> achieving Times New Roman text formatting when transferring statistical
>> results from RStudio into Word?
>>
>> System:
>> Windows 11
>> R 4.5.1
>> RStudio 2024.12.0+
>>
>> Thanks for any guidance or best practices.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Thomas Subia
>>
>
> Rmarkdown, with this in the YAML:
>
> mainfont: Times New Roman
>
> It might be necessary to specify
>
> output:
>  pdf_document:
>    latex_engine: xelatex
> mainfont: Times New Roman
>
> If necessary one could specify
>
> output:
>  word_document
>
> but I?ve had less success with that (in placing figures, for example).
>
> In graphs and so on, it might be necessary to specify the font in the code
that creates them.
>
> -Richard
>
> ---
> Richard Sherman
> Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Science
> Asian University for Women
> https://asian-university.org/
>
>
>        [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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