"Vinyar Tengwar" is Dog-Quenya for "News Letters". Vinyar is the plural of vinya, "new", and Tengwar means "letters". Despite the incorrectness of the title, it was kept for old times' sake and also because the correct form proposed to replace it, Vinyë Tengwar, means "new letters" instead of "news letters".
Vinyar Tengwar first appeared in 1988, at first edited by Jorge Quiñonez and later taken over by Carl F. Hostetter. It appeared in bimonthly intervals at first, but after July 1994, issues appeared more irregularly, roughly once a year. This coincided with the greater frequency of publication of texts written by Tolkien himself; the journal is now dedicated primarily to such texts. Several of these texts were mentioned in volumes of The History of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, but not published in that series owing to their specialist or recondite nature.
Back issues of the journal are now available for all issues, and published in collections of ten issues on a per-order basis.