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on Gopher (inofficial)
(HTM) Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
(HTM) Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
benjaminwai wrote 2 hours 46 min ago:
I am surprised they haven't come up with their own Truth font instead.
"Everything is written in Truth".
paradox460 wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
Regardless of the reasons why, I'm glad. I cannot stand calibri. It's
one of the ugliest fonts I've ever had to use, somehow looking uglier
than even joke fonts like comic sans
Adrock wrote 12 hours 49 min ago:
Surprised they didnât go with .
jcalvinowens wrote 13 hours 8 min ago:
The verbiage in the PR reminds me of a bit from The Night Watch [1]:
> [...] and at some
point, you will have to decide whether serifs are daring statements of
modernity, or tools of hegemonic oppression that implicitly support
feudalism and illiteracy
(HTM) [1]: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf
Klaus23 wrote 14 hours 55 min ago:
Good, and not because of the diversity drama that the US government
wants to shoehorn in here. Any font that makes the uppercase "i" and
the lowercase "L" look the same is absolute garbage. Yes, I have a
strong opinion about this!
m000 wrote 15 hours 41 min ago:
Good news: At least he didn't order the department to use Computer
Modern.
Bad news: Missed opportunity for Fraktur to make a comeback.
mathgradthrow wrote 15 hours 58 min ago:
Here's the actual memo, in case you want to read it yourself and form
your own conclusions:
(HTM) [1]: https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/12/state-department-retur...
woliveirajr wrote 16 hours 8 min ago:
And now I know why the default font was changed in Word. Arg. Don't
think I like Times New Roman but it was the recommend font for academic
papers in Brazil (and the recommendation still persists).
queuebert wrote 17 hours 17 min ago:
I'm glad to see that a government elected by rural, blue-collar workers
is tackling the issues those workers care most about.
/s
mgkimsal wrote 17 hours 25 min ago:
Make Arial Great Again
ecopoesis wrote 18 hours 17 min ago:
Today is a good day to learn about Nazi Germany's Normal Type Decree:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabacher#History
stevetron wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
Which Times does Rubio want: There's a NY version, and a Chicago
version.
I got politely informed to not use NYTimes font in a paper I turned-in
when I was in college. On that occasion, it was an accident. I'd
taken the file to school to print, and my owiginal font selection had
been replaced by the default. My professor merely said that it is hard
to read by people with older eyes.
Several years later, I understand. My default font is now set for
Liberation Sans. I have trouble reading 'decorative' fonts. For
printouts, I use Liberation Mono.
Thorrez wrote 18 hours 30 min ago:
Are you saying there are multiple fonts named "Times New Roman"? I
can't seem to find any reference to this online.
anonym29 wrote 19 hours 1 min ago:
Glad my government continues to work hard on solving the important
problems that affect real people like me.
jurjo wrote 19 hours 22 min ago:
For a moment I thought it had something to do with "Cuadernillos Rubio"
[1]. They are small workbooks quite common in Spain for kids to learn
how to write. However, the font they use is not Times New Roman...
(HTM) [1]: https://www.amazon.es/-/en/gp/product/8417427627?ref_=dbs_m_mn...
dboreham wrote 19 hours 43 min ago:
See also:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_dispute
reneberlin wrote 20 hours 13 min ago:
"To serif or not to serif?" that is now a question of our Times.
nomdep wrote 20 hours 22 min ago:
I figured the big scandal would be some bloated government contract
shelling out millions for Calibri licenses. But nope, turns out the guy
just⦠doesnât like the font. What an absolute clown show.
indymike wrote 20 hours 30 min ago:
Reminds me of the Postal Service spending billions to change the logo
from a stylized eagle to a... stylized eagle.
picafrost wrote 20 hours 31 min ago:
This will make much more sense when the US announces its move away from
Arabic numerals (too diverse) back to Roman numerals.
jennyholzer wrote 20 hours 58 min ago:
I am staunchly anti-Republican.
In my opinion, the sole cultural domain in which Republicans are far
stronger than Democrats is graphic design.
If you do not have a strong graphic design background, I'd urge you to
avoid taking sides on this matter on the basis of party affiliation.
This is good politics from the Republicans.
In my opinion it is disastrous for Democrats to align themselves with
mediocre cultural products.
Microsoft has a very close relationship with the US government and over
the last 20+ years has demonstrated extremely low quality standards.
The US government's shift to using Calibri is clearly a consequence of
this close relationship.
Claims about the "readability" of Calibri in comparison to Times New
Roman are spurious and unverifiable; very seriously type foundries say
things this about every single new typeface released.
Frankly, Calibri is an ugly and poorly designed typeface. It is
Microsoft's Vista-era Helvetica dupe. It is inferior to Times New
Roman.
If you're defending Calibri over the most popular typeface of all time,
I hope it's (somehow) coming from an aesthetically minded place
martin_a wrote 21 hours 32 min ago:
Besides all the daily stuff that happens with the current US
government, I'm _really_ excited (not in the best way) to see how the
citizens of the USA, Europe and the whole world will deal with the
aftermaths of the current government.
Strange times to live in.
HackerThemAll wrote 21 hours 38 min ago:
Noto Serif would have been a better choice, it is far more readable and
is capable of representing all languages in the world.
But then it's bigger, for example to replace Time New Roman 10 it would
require Noto Serif 8.5.
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 30 min ago:
I'm definitely not suggesting someone make one, but Rubio sounds like
an awfully good name for a font...
GeorgeRichard wrote 22 hours 37 min ago:
>>decorum and professionalism
Yes, the hallmark of the Trump administration.
thinkindie wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
I'm amazed by all these silly priorities some people can find.
Stratoscope wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
Additional reporting from Gizmodo:
Marco Rubio Orders State Dept to Stop Using Calibri Font in Anti-DEI
Push
(HTM) [1]: https://gizmodo.com/marco-rubio-orders-state-dept-to-stop-usin...
amluto wrote 23 hours 12 min ago:
IMO Calibri and Times New Roman are both poor choices: they are not
free. The US Governmentâs works are not generally subject to
copyright, and IMO itâs rather obnoxious for their fonts to be
restricted. Also, Calibri is specifically a Microsoft font, and maybe
the government should be a bit less beholden to Microsoft.
IMO the government should pick something available under an appropriate
free license or commission a new font for the purpose.
(I personally much prefer Times New Roman to Calibri for printed
documents, but thatâs neither here nor there.)
aqrit wrote 17 hours 17 min ago:
MS makes "Times New Roman" available (at no cost), but not "Calibri".
AlanYx wrote 18 hours 42 min ago:
This is my view as well. That being said, Time New Roman is
marginally better because there are several good, modern open source
alternatives with the same metrics that can be substituted. And
there's good tool support virtually everywhere for those
alternatives, like in TeX.
There is a metric-compatible open alternative to Calibri (Carlito)
but it seems more vulnerable to lawyer shenanigans and doesn't have
extensive tool support.
FinnKuhn wrote 17 hours 33 min ago:
Which Times New Roman alternatives would you recommend?
tobr wrote 22 hours 31 min ago:
US Gov already has an âofficialâ open source typeface, Public
Sans. [1] Unfortunately, itâs also intended to be not just
accessible, but âprinciples-drivenâ. Canât have that. (More
seriously, itâs probably more appropriate for screens than print)
(HTM) [1]: https://public-sans.digital.gov/
ndsipa_pomu wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
I'm surprised he didn't get Hugo Boss to design a font
LucasFonts wrote 23 hours 57 min ago:
Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de
Grootâs thoughts on the matter:
The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called
âwasteful diversity fontâ is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri
was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer
screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New
Roman as the default font in the Office suite. There were sound reasons
for moving away from Times: Calibri performs exceptionally well at
small sizes and on standard office monitors, whereas serif fonts like
Times New Roman tend to appear more distorted. While serif fonts are
well-suited to high-resolution displays, such as those found on modern
smartphones, on typical office screens the serifs introduce unnecessary
visual noise and can be particularly problematic for users with
impaired vision, such as older adults.
Professional typography can be achieved with both serif and sans-serif
fonts. However, Times New Romanâa typeface older than the current
presidentâpresents unique challenges. Originally crafted in Great
Britain for newspaper printing, Times was optimised for paper, with
each letterform meticulously cut and tested for specific sizes. In the
digital era, larger size drawings were repurposed as models, resulting
in a typeface that appears too thin and sharp when printed at high
quality.
Serif fonts are often perceived as more traditional, but they are also
more demanding to use effectively. While a skilled typographer can, in
theory, produce excellent results with Times, using it in its default
digital form is not considered professional practice.
Calibri, by contrast, incorporates extensive spacing adjustments and
language-specific refinements. The digital version of Times New Roman,
developed in the early days of computing, offers only minimal kerning
and letter-pair adjustments. This is especially evident in words set in
all capitalsâsuch as âCHICAGOââwhere the spacing is
inconsistent: the letters âHICâ are tightly packed, while âCAGâ
are spaced too far apart. Microsoft cannot rectify these issues without
altering the appearance of existing documents.
johannesrexx wrote 8 hours 29 min ago:
Your Calibri font is Microsoft proprietary and is not open source. It
exists so that MS Office documents won't look right on non-Microsoft
systems. It's a dirty aspect of Microsoft's Embrace-Extend-Extinguish
stategy meant to further its monopoly. It's disgusting that you cite
all of these wonder benefits of Calibri without admitting the true
underlying reason it exists.
scelerat wrote 16 hours 27 min ago:
The current administration is regressive and explicitly, triumphantly
anti-expert.
Within this environment the decision to eschew the font that was
expertly designed for present needs in favor of one designed in the
past for different ones makes perfect sense.
behnamoh wrote 16 hours 48 min ago:
Politics aside, I never liked Calibri, until last year. I think it
has a place for small text printed on paper, but other than that,
there are far better fonts out there. The non-sharp/round
edges/corners and the fact that it looks a bit childish make me not
want to use it in anything serious/professional. It's also waaay
over-used by people who don't have a taste in design and just select
the default font in their PowerPoint/Word files.
tracker1 wrote 16 hours 30 min ago:
Calibri is a pretty nice screen font. That said, I would rather
see official documents in a non-commercially licensed font face
that can be used by any/all OSes and platforms without
incumbrances.
KronisLV wrote 15 hours 46 min ago:
If they wanted to go back to Times, they could have at least
looked at
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts
behnamoh wrote 16 hours 27 min ago:
Nah, it's ugly and doesn't exude "professionalism" at all. For
that you'd need a serif font, or at least a proper sans serif
like Helvetica or SF Pro.
tgma wrote 15 hours 38 min ago:
100% this. There are a lot of sans-serifs that are much more
prestigious and timeless.
Being the default in MSOffice also doesnât help with
professionalism as it makes it even more pedestrian.
behnamoh wrote 14 hours 34 min ago:
Exactly! idk why I got downvoted...
hilbert42 wrote 17 hours 25 min ago:
This reply is far too polite, but I understand protocol and necessity
dictates those words.
If you cannot say it then let me: that spiteful, revengeful
petty-minded fuckwit needs to be told that it's a fucked decision of
the first order, and that someone in his position has no right nor
the time to be involved in grinding the minutiae of state so fine.
Heaven help us, please!
rbanffy wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
> Heaven help us, please!
Midterms are coming. You know what to do.
rob74 wrote 20 hours 7 min ago:
May I ask what your thoughts are on fonts that prioritise legibility
over everything else, like Atkinson Hyperlegible? IMHO Calibri has a
better balance between legibility and a consistent/polished look. The
Munich transportation company MVG wanted to set an example here and
adapted this font for their information screens at subway stations,
on trains etc. There's one catch though: because Atkinson
Hyperlegible tends to have wider glyphs than the previous (also sans
serif, of course) font they used, they had to reduce the font size to
fit the same amount of information on the screens, so the increased
readability is partly counteracted by the decreased font size.
Sunspark wrote 19 hours 38 min ago:
As a lay person who likes to look at fonts closely, the purpose
they are intended for matters. I don't like the Atkinson font for
body text because I find it too round. For a transit sign I suppose
it is fine since it would be printed at display sizes and only
momentarily gazed at.
Calibri is a high-quality font that works as body text, but it's
cold.
Times NR on paper is fine, on screen it is not fine unless you have
a high resolution display.
Cthulhu_ wrote 20 hours 35 min ago:
I bet they want to get rid of Calibri because it was designed by a
Dutch person. There's only two things I hate in this world, people
who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch.
(disclaimer: I am Dutch).
mghackerlady wrote 18 hours 12 min ago:
I've always heard this joke with the french instead of the dutch
beepbooptheory wrote 17 hours 42 min ago:
This is a line from Michael Cain in Austin Powers: Goldmember
(2002).
innocentoldguy wrote 13 hours 53 min ago:
And, he delivers the line with such perfection.
rbanffy wrote 13 hours 29 min ago:
I am yet to see Michael Caine fail at delivering his lines
perfectly.
Uehreka wrote 18 hours 38 min ago:
> (disclaimer: I am Dutch).
Well then I suppose itâs only appropriate to say: Goede fhtagn
mschuster91 wrote 21 hours 2 min ago:
> Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri.
Damn, the diversity of people one can meet here on HN continues to
amaze me. Even after almost 13 years.
> The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a
so-called âwasteful diversity fontâ is both amusing and
regrettable.
The cruelty (in this case, against people with visual impairments) is
the actual point, as always, and the appearance of "going back to the
good old times" is the visual that's being sold to the gullibles.
notachatbot123 wrote 21 hours 34 min ago:
I love how emphasize is given to accessibility for older adults, such
as the orange man. But I guess he gets his printouts with few words
and big fonts anyways.
bayarearefugee wrote 13 hours 1 min ago:
Trump doesn't read, according to Pete Davidson
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUW3HfPEdKY
Tor3 wrote 20 hours 1 min ago:
The way he writes indicates that he has very little experience with
reading in the first place. Weird wording, strange capitalization
and punctiation, etc.
red-iron-pine wrote 20 hours 4 min ago:
lol he's not reading printouts.
dionian wrote 18 hours 59 min ago:
Funny how they make this joke about Trump when biden got caught
on camera using cue cards and having reporters questions and
headshots on a cheat sheet...
mgkimsal wrote 18 hours 33 min ago:
But it's not a joke. We've had a decade of reports with
insiders indicating he doesn't read daily briefings. [1] Can he
read? No doubt he can read some. I can't say he's illiterate.
But functionally, he's nowhere near the reading and
comprehension skills of what we should expect from a national
leader.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-looks-at-charts-...
mgkimsal wrote 14 hours 29 min ago:
Can't edit but... an adult who grew up in the US their entire
life who can't read out "acetaminophen" or "yosemite" is
certainly under-literate.
rob74 wrote 20 hours 18 min ago:
...and then he ignores them.
BasilofBasiley wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
>Serif fonts are often perceived as more traditional, but they are
also more demanding to use effectively. While a skilled typographer
can, in theory, produce excellent results with Times, using it in its
default digital form is not considered professional practice.
This reads like your CEO is mixing an argument against serifs with an
argument against Times specifically. Later on they make a case
against Times' lack of support for more modern features in digital
fonts, which is a fine argument, but a question comes to mind: is the
solution a sans-serif font?
It seems to me upon reading the article that Rubio's staff, or Rubio
himself, is being overly specific with the font and I suspect that,
being uninformed, what they really want is a serif font rather than
Times New Roman, specifically. Maybe I'm wrong.
In any case, I'd like for you/your CEO to make it clearer, if you
will: do you believe official government communications should use a
sans-serif font altogether or is it just a problem with Times? Or
both?
On a more personal note, is there any serif font you'd suggest as an
alternative?
Thank you. (And sorry if I read this wrong.)
tbyehl wrote 18 hours 44 min ago:
> what they really want
What they really want is to smear something the previous
administration did as DEIA, woke, wasteful, and anti-conservative
(ie: change).
TNR is awful and anyone who actually cares about serifs knows there
are better options.
moltopoco wrote 6 hours 1 min ago:
From the article:
> ...according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters...
The jab at the DEIA is petty, sure. But if the only intent was to
smear them, why didn't they even announce it publicly? It was the
choice of Reuters and HN to make an MS Office font change(!) a
big deal.
rbanffy wrote 13 hours 25 min ago:
> DEIA, woke, wasteful, and anti-conservative (ie: change).
I translate things like "DEI", "woke" and "anti-conservative" as
"basic kindness"
userbinator wrote 7 hours 2 min ago:
I translate those things as "intelligently disguised brainrot".
nabla9 wrote 22 hours 18 min ago:
I think we all can agree that Comic Sans MS reflects the current US
government best, both spiritually and aesthetically.
jpster wrote 11 hours 16 min ago:
I beg to differ. Wingdings is more like it.
ndkap wrote 18 hours 12 min ago:
As an aside, I didn't know what Comic Sans looks like, so I
searched on Google and it rendered the whole page in that font. I
tried with other Fonts too like Arial and Times New Roman, and it
did the same there. So cool!
lippihom wrote 9 hours 43 min ago:
This was super cool - nice little Google easter egg.
rbanffy wrote 13 hours 32 min ago:
Sadly, it doesn't work with the coolest niche fonts...
(HTM) [1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=ibm+3270
tracker1 wrote 16 hours 33 min ago:
Very cool... but I can't seem to get it to do so for other fonts
I can think of off the top of my head... Inconsolata, Consolas,
Fira Code, etc. "Times New Roman" does work as well.
Would be cool to see google support this for at least all the
fonts in Google Fonts' library, since they're already well
supported web fonts.
adolph wrote 19 hours 14 min ago:
Your comment may be in jest but there is some evidence that "easier
to read" does not benefit "retain what was read."
And that brings us back to these ugly fonts. Because their shapes
are
unfamiliar, because they are less legible, they make the mind
work a little
harder; the slight frisson of Comic Sans wakes us up or at least
prevents us
from leaning on the usual efficiencies. âThe complex fonts . .
. function
like an alarm,â Alter writes. They signal âthat we need to
recruit additional
mental resources to overcome that sense of difficulty.â
(HTM) [1]: https://lithub.com/the-ugliness-of-comic-sans-has-a-practi...
nimbius wrote 19 hours 26 min ago:
i tend to find the kerning issues noted by the calibri team are
moot. most Times New Roman is perfectly legible with careful
observation and maybe a fresh cup of covfefe.
lo_zamoyski wrote 21 hours 49 min ago:
I would say itâs worse than that. Read Platoâs âRepublicâ
and you may come to appreciate a much more expansive
appropriateness of Comic Sans, beyond just the current
administration.
hilbert42 wrote 17 hours 12 min ago:
I have, many times, hence my earlier comment.
If Rubio read Republic then he's just demonstrated that he'd not
have understood it.
butchcassidi wrote 21 hours 51 min ago:
I would rather see Wingdings.
VikingCoder wrote 20 hours 20 min ago:
Îpuá´É¯ oÊ ÇɯoÉ ÊÉÉ¥Ê sÊuoÉ É¹ÇÉ¥Êo ÇɹÉ
ÇɹÇÉ¥ê
lenerdenator wrote 19 hours 50 min ago:
That's the official font of the Australian government.
ptdorf wrote 17 hours 50 min ago:
You meant: Austria. The lang of Kangaroos.
wiz21c wrote 1 day ago:
really good 1st of April joke !!! rotfl
ahem... We're not the 1st of April...
Cryptoclidus wrote 1 day ago:
Bullshit looks better with serifs?
thih9 wrote 1 day ago:
> To restore decorum and professionalism to the Departmentâs written
work productsâ¦
Who defines decorum and professionalism? Because Iâd say this change
is anything but.
Then again, this is very partisan and so subjective. Still, Iâm not a
fan of a government pushing certain esthetics with such a BS
justification.
goku12 wrote 23 hours 19 min ago:
Not exactly related, but this is also the government that keeps
insisting that the tariffs are paid by the foreign exporters (now
that's a BS justification by any government that warrants widespread
panic). It's all about narratives. I wouldn't bother much with fact
checking them.
3836293648 wrote 1 day ago:
The motivation is truly awful, but the result? Thank goodness. Calibri
just screams unprofessional
pengaru wrote 1 day ago:
If only this administration would limit its actions to such forms of
bikeshedding...
gverrilla wrote 1 day ago:
Dog whistle for transphobic people.
OhMeadhbh wrote 1 day ago:
This makes me want to run for President on the platform of Comic Sans
for all government documents.
nelox wrote 1 day ago:
Reuters calling the switch a "font" change instead of a typeface change
is troubling, though consistent with a society that now casually refers
to all pasta as "spaghetti". A typeface is the design; a font is its
specific instance. This is basic knowledge, taught to children,
houseplants, and most domesticated goats.
A simple correction would stop this spiral, but Reuters appears
committed to forging a bold new era in which terminology is chosen at
random, like drawing Scrabble tiles from a bag and declaring them
journalism.
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 40 min ago:
> Reuters calling the switch a "font" change instead of a typeface
change is troubling
Come on, they're writing for a general audience, not a bunch of
pedantic typographers and developers.
> a society that now casually refers to all pasta as "spaghetti"
I have never experienced this; in what contexts have you?
> taught to children
We were 100%, never taught this (in the UK).
> A simple correction would stop this spiral
It wouldn't, it would just mean fewer people understood what the
story was about.
Macha wrote 23 hours 52 min ago:
> This is basic knowledge, taught to children, houseplants, and most
domesticated goats.
(HTM) [1]: https://xkcd.com/2501/
lil-lugger wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm a professional graphic designer, people in the industry use
font, type and typeface interchangeably. No one goes âUmm
Actuallyâ¦â
you should also tell that to who wrote css, because font-weight
doesnât make sense if a font is already a specific weight. Words
mean something specific until they donât and the meaning changes
over time and thatâs okay
dghf wrote 1 day ago:
If all DoS documents are prepared with the same software or software
suite (e.g. MS Office), isn't that a distinction without much of a
difference? They've gone back to using TNR.ttf instead of Calibri.ttf
(or whatever the files are actually called).
Ghoelian wrote 1 day ago:
> A typeface is the design; a font is its specific instance. This is
basic knowledge, taught to children, houseplants, and most
domesticated goats.
I didn't know this, and this explanation isn't really helping. (I did
know there's a difference between typeface and font, but no idea
what).
Why would this be basic knowledge when all most people ever have to
deal with is the font options in Word?
dghf wrote 1 day ago:
Originally, a font (also spelled fount, at least formerly) was a
physical thing: a collection of metal slugs, each bearing the
reversed shape of a letter or other symbol (a glyph, in
typographical parlance). You would arrange these slugs in a wooden
frame, apply a layer of ink to them, and press them against a sheet
of paper.
The typeface dictated the shapes of those glyphs. So you could own
a font of Caslon's English Roman typeface, for example. If you
wanted to print text in different sizes, you would need multiple
fonts. If you wanted to print in italic as well as roman (upright),
you would need another font for that, too.
As there was a finite number of slugs available, what text you
could print on a single sheet was also constrained to an extent by
your font(s). Modern Welsh, for example, has no letter "k": yet
mediaeval Welsh used it liberally. The change came when the Bible
was first printed in Welsh: the only fonts available were made for
English, and didn't have enough k's. So the publisher made the
decision to use c for k, and an orthographical rule was born.
Digital typography, of course, has none of those constraints:
digital text can be made larger or smaller, or heavier or lighter,
or slanted or not, by directly manipulating the glyph shapes; and
you're not going to run out of a particular letter.
So that raises the question: what is a font in digital terms?
There appear to be two schools of thought:
1. A font is a typeface at a particular size and in a particular
weight etc. So Times New Roman is a typeface, but 12pt bold italic
Times New Roman is a font. This attempts to draw parallels with the
physical constraints of a moveable-type font.
2. A font is, as it always was, the instantiation of a typeface. In
digital terms, this means a font file: a .ttf or .otf or whatever.
This may seem like a meaningless distinction, but consider: you can
get different qualities of font files for the same typeface. A
professional, paid-for font will (or should, at least) offer better
kerning and spacing rules, better glyph coverage, etc. And if you
want your text italic or bold, or particularly small or
particularly large (display text), your software can almost
certainly just digitally transform the shapes in your free/cheap,
all-purpose font, But you will get better results with a font that
has been specifically designed to be small or italic or whatever:
text used for small captions, for example, is more legible with a
larger x-height and less variation in stroke width than that used
for body text. Adobe offers 65 separate fonts for its Minion
typeface, in different combinations of italic/roman, weight
(regular/medium/semibold/bold), width (regular/condensed) and size
(caption/body/subhead/display).
Personally, I prefer the second definition.
fhd2 wrote 1 day ago:
In my experience, "font" is the colloquial term referring to either.
Programmers get to demand precision, for journalists it's a bit
tougher. The de facto meaning of terms does, unfortunately, evolve in
sometimes arbitrary ways. And it's tough to fight.
platevoltage wrote 1 day ago:
Why is this a story? I'm fairly certain fonts change all of the time.
Oh right, it's because they can't just make the change, they have to
say something stupid about it. Republican voters, how are you not
insulted? Is this really all it takes to get you to that voting booth?
vanguardanon wrote 1 day ago:
I just wanted to add a comment that I never knew but if you google
Times New Roman they display the entire Google web search results page
in Times New Roman.
DocTomoe wrote 1 day ago:
"Decorum" and Times New Roman. That's the equivalent of pointlessly
plastering everything with marble and gold, you think you are doing
Roman Empire meets Versailles, but ultimately, you're just being tacky.
orthoxerox wrote 1 day ago:
Should've picked Charis SIL. It's a legible and serious serif font,
doesn't make you look like you picked the boring Big Tech default and
has explicitly Christian origins.
7bit wrote 1 day ago:
Explicit christian origin sounds like Jesus himself designed the
font. But no, it's only the label the institute gave itself.
By that measure, I could create a font with explicit godly origin,
because I see myself as a direct descendant of God.
chinathrow wrote 1 day ago:
> U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to
return to using Times New Roman font in official communications,
calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a
"wasteful" diversity move, according to an internal department cable
seen by Reuters.
What a waste of government time and spending.
throwaway8582 wrote 17 hours 59 min ago:
> What a waste of government time and spending
Was the switch to Calibri in 2023 also a waste of time and money, or
are font switches only bad when the Trump administration does them?
ryoshoe wrote 17 hours 52 min ago:
If the belief is that switching a font is wasteful, why is the
solution is to switch fonts again?
baggachipz wrote 19 hours 14 min ago:
The levels of pettiness in this administration know no bounds. I'm
sure they'll forbid the use of "woke", and require all government
employees to say "I terminated sleep this morning".
rbanffy wrote 13 hours 22 min ago:
> The levels of pettiness in this administration know no bounds
(HTM) [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-crue...
stronglikedan wrote 18 hours 41 min ago:
What an odd take. Every administration does this sort of petty
stuff. nothing new under the sun.
Swenrekcah wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
This is demonstrably false. Previous administrations have not. It
used to be normal to do things like keeping cabinet members
appointed by their opponents or not put up a mocking picture of
your predecessor in the white house.
dragonwriter wrote 17 hours 57 min ago:
> It used to be normal to do things like keeping cabinet
members appointed by their opponents
This particular thing was not all that common between
Presidents who succeed normally by election. I think the most
recent was Robert Gates serving as SecDef across the Bush
II/Obama transition, before that there were five kept across
the Reagan/Bush I transition, and no more in the post-WWII
period.
(Itâs true that the pettiness level in this Administration is
unprecedented, but this is not a valid example.)
Swenrekcah wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
True, I didnât mean it was routine but it was somewhat
normal. I just wanted to show the incredible range of
professional behaviour that has disappeared.
mgkimsal wrote 18 hours 25 min ago:
Petty as in 'small and does not really matter' or petty as in
'vindictive'. All administrations do many small things that may
not ultimately have much impact, but often those may be for
benign reasons. Understanding the reasoning behind the decisions
would help in determining what kind of 'petty' this is.
baggachipz wrote 17 hours 17 min ago:
Absolutely vindictive. He goes out of his way to cite "DEI" in
his comments.
TheOtherHobbes wrote 17 hours 42 min ago:
Both.
It's so utterly juvenile and unprofessional. The kind of thing
a petulant twelve year-old does for attention.
JKCalhoun wrote 19 hours 32 min ago:
"wasteful diversity move"
Wild. I'm curious now if someone has an ordered list of fonts from
the gayest to the straightest.
red-iron-pine wrote 20 hours 3 min ago:
"anything we don't like is 'diversity' [woke]"
hopelite wrote 19 hours 30 min ago:
Or maybe the government should have a common convention regarding
official government communications, which Blinken added
fragmentation to by arbitrarily changing the font away from Times
New Roman.
fortyseven wrote 18 hours 56 min ago:
Oh, you're just obsessed with this, aren't you?
throw__away7391 wrote 22 hours 25 min ago:
I read the title of this and as I could not wrap my head around the
idea of "Rubio" here actually meaning Marco Rubio, I assumed this was
a font name, but also laughing to myself just how hilariously absurd
it would be for the Secretary of State to involved in picking
fonts...only to click the link and discover that yes, it is exactly
that absurd.
hopelite wrote 19 hours 47 min ago:
Did you have that kind of reaction, that itâs absurd, when
Blinken ordered the use of Calibri after ~20 years of consistent
use of Times New Roman?
It is objectively more concerning and âabsurdâ, regardless of
âteamâ, that Blinken arbitrarily introduced fragmentation by
adding an additional font to official government communications
when a convention had been established across government to use
Times New Roman.
throw__away7391 wrote 18 hours 28 min ago:
You seem weirdly worked up over this.
Blinken made no public statements on this until he was asked
about it. He did not come out and say for example, "For too long,
the vision impaired community have been discriminated against by
the systemic bias via the use of Times New Roman. Today we are
taking action to change this and restore the dignity of those
this font has long oppressed", but Rubio just did exactly this.
For all I can tell the actual decision was a recommendation made
by an internal team doing an accessibility review.
dylan604 wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
The only other place Iâm familiar with people making
grandiose announcements about their font selection, other than
a font company announcement, is here on HN.
fortyseven wrote 18 hours 57 min ago:
Sure, this is a good point, but only if you completely ignore the
the accessibility gains provided by the change. But I'm guessing
rationality wasn't on the menu when this was written.
greggoB wrote 19 hours 3 min ago:
Can you cite a source that Blinken's decision was arbitrary?
Because Rubio himself is quoted here as attributing a reason for
the change (i.e. that it wasn't arbitrary).
I'm also interested to hear your thoughts on the arbitrariness of
Microsoft's decision to switch to Calibri in 2007 - imagine the
"fragmentation" that must have caused across the business world!
endemic wrote 19 hours 11 min ago:
No, Times New Roman is old fashioned, so moving to something more
readable doesn't shock me.
red-iron-pine wrote 20 hours 2 min ago:
in this case "Rubio" means that ICE would deport him if they saw
him randomly on the streets of Chicago
mikkupikku wrote 22 hours 55 min ago:
How much will it cost to change fonts?
rathole26 wrote 21 hours 21 min ago:
To change tens to hundreds of millions of documents, roughly
50-200M USD.
corrections wrote 21 hours 5 min ago:
Itâs only for the department of state though, and the previous
cost to change to Calibri was about $145,000 over two fiscal
years.
pas wrote 20 hours 40 min ago:
that was the cost of additional a11y remediation, likely the
direct cost of using a different font/typeface going forward
was the time it took for people to read the memo and get used
to change the formatting (maybe even set a new default, maybe
change templates). [1] of course simply comparing years without
a control we have no way of knowing the effect of the change
(well, if we were to look at the previous years at least we
could see if this 145K difference was somehow significant or
not)
(HTM) [1]: https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/full_text_of_marco_...
sejje wrote 18 hours 20 min ago:
Thanks for linking that.
Sadly way more informative than our traditional outlets.
mikkupikku wrote 21 hours 8 min ago:
A dollar a doc? Sounds like a sweet job.
moltopoco wrote 1 day ago:
From the article:
> A cable dated December 9 sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts said
that typography shapes the professionalism of an official document
and Calibri is informal compared to serif typefaces.
> "To restore decorum and professionalism to the Departmentâs
written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program,
the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard
typeface," the cable said.
I don't read that purely as an "anti-woke" move, why did Reuters only
highlight that part and not the bit about professionalism? I do
indeed agree that serifs look more authoritative.
Propelloni wrote 21 hours 24 min ago:
If it is about professionalism, why mention DEIA at all? It's just
virtue-signalling. Reuters realized that and pointed it out.
hopelite wrote 19 hours 1 min ago:
Reuters is an extremely biased organization. That is why they
fixated on that and lied by omission.
The stupid DEIA stuff mention is very likely due to the nature of
universal âdemocracyâ, the need to herd as many sheep into
your own corral as possible through manipulative and emotive
language. Both âteamsâ do it, because that is the system, it
is what it does.
A far more dignified approach would be to focus on the totally
overlooked most important aspect, that not every department
should pick its own font for official government communications
with every new administration.
It was Blinken that arbitrarily introduced that Calibri
fragmentation after the Times New Roman convention had been well
established.
If the font needs to be changed for digital screens, maybe to
where you can toggle official communications to Calibri in
readability mode, then create a common standard across
departments for doing that; donât just throw sand in the gears
with a different, fragmenting font.
ondra wrote 17 hours 43 min ago:
> It was Blinken that arbitrarily introduced
The _second paragraph_ of TFA gives a reason for the
introduction. Please explain how you came to the conclusion
that the change was arbitrary.
Zanfa wrote 22 hours 2 min ago:
> To restore decorum and professionalism
Given the complete absence of either in the current administration,
this is clearly not the real reason. So âwokeâ is the only
explanation left.
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 54 min ago:
Because, even if there is a good argument to replace Calibri on
grounds of professionalism, the cable still explicitly mentions the
"anti-woke" aspect. At best, it's another sideswipe aimed at
minorities and people who represent them. At worst, it's 'doing
something wrong purely because of prejudice'.
Intermernet wrote 23 hours 25 min ago:
Authoritative or Authoritarian?
moltopoco wrote 5 hours 53 min ago:
Yes, a true "mask-off moment": I do find that classic LaTeX
papers look more trustworthy than whatever MS Word outputs by
default.
Associating TNR with authoritarianism would not even be
historically accurate, because many authoritarians pushed to
simplify writing (Third Reich, Soviets, CCP); if anything, TNR
looks _conservative_, which is probably the look that Rubio is
going for.
mr_toad wrote 22 hours 57 min ago:
Fasces or fascist?
beambot wrote 1 day ago:
Tilting at windmills...
RobotToaster wrote 1 day ago:
Tilting at wingdings
ksynwa wrote 1 day ago:
Calibri is woke?
mikkupikku wrote 22 hours 0 min ago:
It's just ragebaiting. Don't take the bait.
If I say I bought a yellow car, nobody cares. If I say I bought a
yellow car to troll the libtards, now everybody is mad even though
what I said makes no sense and it all has little consequence
anyway.
JKCalhoun wrote 19 hours 28 min ago:
I'm way past ragingâjust laughing at the stupidity at this
point.
Muromec wrote 23 hours 37 min ago:
The font is not masculine enough.
user____name wrote 12 hours 55 min ago:
All paragraph text to to use the proper manly IMPACT in the
future.
klez wrote 1 day ago:
The point being that if the change to Calibri has been done to
improve accessibility (hence: inclusion) that makes it woke.
Which is stupid, of course, especially considering that sans-serif
fonts improve readability on screens for most people, not for a
minority.
EDIT: extraneous "don't" in the middle of a sentence
croes wrote 22 hours 14 min ago:
Many things labeled as woke benefit the masses like environmental
protection.
I guess people like to stay asleep.
Will be a rough awakening
spicymaki wrote 20 hours 27 min ago:
> Will be a rough awakening
I used to believe that people would wake up, but that does not
seem to be what happens. They are just herded around by the
next dog that comes along.
brookst wrote 17 hours 17 min ago:
The president of the US struggles to stay awake in his brief
detours from the golf course. Itâs a perfect metaphor for
the country. All seriousness has left the building.
goku12 wrote 23 hours 44 min ago:
So what next? Wheelchair ramps? Seats for the elderly and the
pregnant? Accessibility features don't displace or even
inconvenience the majority in any manner. They only make
facilities accessible to an additional crowd, who should be
getting them as a matter of right in the first place. What's the
end game here?
rbanffy wrote 13 hours 19 min ago:
> What's the end game here?
There's no end game in particular.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-...
ZeroGravitas wrote 21 hours 43 min ago:
They've been talking about rolling back "DEIA" since they got
in power. The A is "accessibility" so they're not hiding this.
Propelloni wrote 21 hours 27 min ago:
That does not make it right.
ManBeardPc wrote 23 hours 30 min ago:
The endgame is to normalize punishing groups/individuals for
any reason on a whim of the ones in charge. Start with
minorities and people who canât defend themselves, then later
you can do easier to anyone who gets inconvenient. Despotism
101.
ndsipa_pomu wrote 23 hours 42 min ago:
Cruelty is the point
dionian wrote 18 hours 58 min ago:
Font changes are cruel?
ndsipa_pomu wrote 18 hours 27 min ago:
They can be if a font is chosen due to it being easier to
read for some people and then it's reverted so that those
people will then struggle to read. It's akin to removing
ramps from shops to make it awkward for those in
wheelchairs.
coffeebeqn wrote 1 day ago:
I guess Iâm glad theyâre focusing on this rather than breaking
something else in society
gmueckl wrote 23 hours 59 min ago:
Nah, the state department is big enough to do both at the same
time - at least it would be at full staffing levels.
chinathrow wrote 1 day ago:
Point is they're doing both, at once.
zkmon wrote 1 day ago:
The first-world problems!
seydor wrote 1 day ago:
A Glorious Font for the Times New Roman Caesar
goku12 wrote 23 hours 3 min ago:
So if this one is a dictator, does that mean the next one is an
emperor?
bb88 wrote 1 day ago:
TIL: if you google Times New Roman, you get Google search results in
Times New Roman.
You also get Calibri if you search for it, but not Zapf Dingbats.
userbinator wrote 1 day ago:
I never liked Calibri when it was pushed aggressively by MS and showed
up everywhere - I prefer Arial or Helvetica for sans-serif, and think
TNR is a good default for serif, with Computer Modern a close second.
dghf wrote 23 hours 0 min ago:
Computer Modern is nice on paper but a bit spindly on screen, IMO:
Knuth's other serif font, Concrete Roman, works better for that.
iguana_shine wrote 1 day ago:
This headline is obnoxious
ycombigrator wrote 1 day ago:
What do you call a Banana Republic that has lots of different kinds of
bananas?
retrocog wrote 1 day ago:
Fell asleep in America and woke up in Lilliput
ropable wrote 1 day ago:
It's beyond satire that US conservatives are now somehow upset about
certain fonts being woke.
wltr wrote 1 day ago:
There was an event (or events?) in the past, when some past documents
were forged, but with the default (in MS Word, I suppose) Calibre font,
which was released years later. I wonder if this has something to do
with it.
I love if someone remembers that event better and can provide a link.
My memory serves it was about a decade or so ago.
praptak wrote 1 day ago:
Calibri was supposedly easier to read by people with disabilities.
While this itself is debatable, that's not the reasoning behind the
font switch. The mere attempt at making life easier for disadvantaged
people is labeled DEI and as such cannot be tolerated by this
administration.
journal wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
by that logic if we help them see why don't we help them understand
as well?
beowulfey wrote 23 hours 40 min ago:
I would have thought the change to Calibri was simply because office
uses it as the default font now
behnamoh wrote 16 hours 47 min ago:
It was the default, now it's Aptos.
unsupp0rted wrote 23 hours 51 min ago:
More charitably, the signaling could be: âkeep the government as
small as possible, but no smaller than thatâ, i.e. use things that
basically mostly work and quit expending resources addressing every
edge case, particularly when itâs performative (slight font
variations) rather than obvious (a ramp to get into a public
building)
Propelloni wrote 20 hours 58 min ago:
That's very charitable--especially considering that leaving the
font alone in the first place would have been the smaller option.
And don't get me started about the current meddling of the
executive in my private life? I haven't had a more intrusive
administration since living in Singapore.
oblio wrote 22 hours 9 min ago:
Microsoft Office (and Windows) changed the default font more than a
decade ago.
Changing it back is the exact definition of performative work.
Edit: 19 years ago. Almost 2 decades ago!
logifail wrote 1 day ago:
> Calibri was supposedly easier to read by people with disabilities
I'd love to know how that was determined. Given that:
"If different fonts are best for different people, you might imagine
that the solution to the fonts problem would be a preference setting
to allow each user to select the font thatâs best for them.
This solution will not work, for two reasons. First, previous
research on user-interface customization has found that most users
donât use preference settings, but simply make do with the default.
Second, and worse, users donât know whatâs best for them, so they
canât choose the best font, even if they were given the option to
customize their fonts. In this study, participants read 14% faster in
their fastest font (314 WPM, on average) compared to their most
preferred font (275 WPM, on average)"
(HTM) [1]: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/best-font-for-online-readin...
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
> Second, and worse, users donât know whatâs best for them, so
they canât choose the best font, even if they were given the
option to customize their fonts. In this study, participants read
14% faster in their fastest font (314 WPM, on average) compared to
their most preferred font (275 WPM, on average)"
What you actually want to compare speed in the most preferred font
to, to show that individual choice is or is not better than
one-size-fits-all dictate, is speed in the font that would be
chosen as the universal choice by whichever mechanism would be used
(to show it is universally better, show that there is no universal
font choice that would lead to the average user being faster than
with their preferred font.)
All comparing each individual's preferred font to each
individual's fastest is showing that an individualized test-based
optimized font choice is better for reading speed than individual
preference font choice, which I guess is interesting if you are
committed to individualized choices, but not if the entire question
is whether individual or centralized choices are superior.
adrian_b wrote 22 hours 36 min ago:
A meaningful testing of the differences between fonts is greatly
complicated by the effect of the familiarity with the tested
fonts.
The differences between individuals which perform better with
different fonts may have nothing to do with the intrinsic
qualities of the fonts but may be determined only by the previous
experience of the tested subjects with the tested fonts or with
other fonts that are very similar to the tested fonts.
Only if you measure reading speed differences between fonts with
which the tested subjects are very familiar, e.g. by having read
or written a variety of texts for one year or more, you can
conclude that the speed differences may be caused by features of
the font, and if the optimal fonts are different between users,
then this is a real effect.
There are many fonts that have some characters which are not
distinctive enough, so they have only subtle differences. When
you read texts with such fonts you may confuse such characters
frequently and deduce which is the correct character only from
the context, causing you to linger over a word, but after reading
many texts you may perceive automatically the inconspicuous
differences between characters and read them correctly without
confusions, at a higher speed.
Many older people, who have read great amounts of printed books,
find the serif typefaces more legible, because these have been
traditionally preferred in book texts. On the other hand, many
younger people, whose reading experience has been provided mainly
by computer/phone screens, where sans-serif fonts are preferred
because of the low resolution of the screens, find sans-serif
fonts more legible. This is clearly caused only by the
familiarity with the tested fonts and does not provide
information about the intrinsic qualities of the fonts.
Moreover, the resolution of most displays, even that of most 4k
monitors, remains much lower than the resolution of printed paper
and there are many classic typefaces that are poorly rendered on
most computer monitors. To compare the legibility of the
typefaces, one should use only very good monitors, so that some
typefaces should not be handicapped. Otherwise, one should label
the study as a study of the legibility as constrained by a
certain display resolution. At low enough display resolutions,
the fonts designed especially to avoid confusions between
characters, like many of the fonts intended for programming,
should outperform any others, while at high display resolutions
the results may be very different.
logifail wrote 13 hours 28 min ago:
> Moreover, the resolution of most displays, even that of most
4k monitors, remains much lower than the resolution of printed
paper and there are many classic typefaces that are poorly
rendered on most computer monitors. To compare the legibility
of the typefaces, one should use only very good monitors, so
that some typefaces should not be handicapped.
I'm afraid I assumed this particular part was a joke, but
having read it several times I'm no longer sure ...
Assuming it's not a joke, what would you suggest to readers of
content using any particular font who don't have "very good
monitors"? What are they supposed to do instead? Not
attempt to read the content? Save up for a better monitor?
adrian_b wrote 18 hours 28 min ago:
I have written the above posting before reading the complete
research paper linked by the previous poster.
After reading the complete paper, I have seen that the study is
much worse than I had supposed based on its abstract.
This study is typical for the font legibility studies made by
people without knowledge about typography. I find annoying that
such studies are very frequent. Whoever wants to make such a
study should consult some specialist before doing another
useless study.
The authors claim that a positive feature of their study is the
great diversity of fonts that they have tested: 16 fonts.
This claim is very false. All their fonts are just very minor
variations derived from 4 or 5 basic types and even those basic
types have only few relevant differences from Times New Roman
and Arial.
All their fonts do not include any valuable innovation in
typeface design made after WWII, and most fonts do not include
any valuable innovation made after WWI. They include a
geometric sans serif, which is a kind of typeface created after
WWI, but this kind of typefaces is intended for packaging and
advertising, not for bulk text, so its inclusion has little
importance for a legibility test.
I would classify all their 16 typefaces as "typefaces that suck
badly" from the PoV of legibility and I would never use any of
them in my documents.
Obviously, other people may not agree with my opinion, but they
should be first exposed to more varied kinds of typefaces,
before forming an opinion about what they prefer, and not only
to the low-diversity typefaces bundled with Windows.
After WWII, even if the (bad in my opinion) sans-serif
typefaces similar to Helvetica/Arial have remained the most
widespread, which have too simplified letter shapes, so that
many letters are ambiguous, there have appeared also other
kinds of sans-serif typefaces, which combine some of the
features of older sans-serif typefaces with some of the
features of serif typefaces.
In my opinion, such hybrid typefaces (e.g. Palatino Sans,
Optima Nova, FF Meta, TheSans, Trajan Sans) are better than
both the classic serif typefaces and the classic sans-serif
typefaces.
logifail wrote 13 hours 40 min ago:
> the study is much worse than I had supposed
The purpose of that research study wasn't to survey the
entire history of sans-serif design(!), it was to answer a
fairly focused question: does OpenDyslexic improve reading
for the population it claims(or claimed) to help?
The answer appears to be no.
logifail wrote 1 day ago:
> What you actually want to compare [..]
The (ex-)scientist in me is looking for a controlled study,
ideally published in a peer reviewed journal, looking at - how
can I put this - actual data.
60s of Googling gave me this
The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on
reading rate and accuracy [1] "A single-subject alternating
treatment design was used to investigate the extent to which a
specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, impacted reading rate or
accuracy compared to two commonly used fonts when used with
elementary students identified as having dyslexia. OpenDyslexic
was compared to Arial and Times New Roman in three reading tasks:
(a) letter naming, (b) word reading, and (c) nonsense word
reading. Data were analyzed through visual analysis and
improvement rate difference, a nonparametric measure of
nonoverlap for comparing treatments. Results from this
alternating treatment experiment show no improvement in reading
rate or accuracy for individual students with dyslexia, as well
as the group as a whole. While some students commented that the
font was ânewâ or âdifferentâ, none of the participants
reported preferring to read material presented in that font.
These results indicate there may be no benefit for translating
print materials to this font."
Advocacy for people with disabilities is important, but actual
data may be even more important.
(HTM) [1]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5629233/
userbinator wrote 1 day ago:
In this study, participants read 14% faster in their fastest font
(314 WPM, on average) compared to their most preferred font (275
WPM, on average)"
That may be a case of "I hate reading this font so much I don't
want to do more than skim over the text."
t0lo wrote 1 day ago:
Nope- times new roman just looks better.
midnitewarrior wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think that much thought went into it. The change was
initiated by the department's DEIA ("A" for Accessibility) office.
Anything that office did was a priority for this administration.
Keep in mind that the transgenic mouse breeding program used to make
lab mice for research got defined because the President claimed
Democrats were so woke they were funding "trans" mice research.
Half of what they are doing is virtue signalling and posturing
without any real understanding of what they are doing.
rdiddly wrote 1 day ago:
All true except the fact that it's not virtue that they're
signaling.
ndsipa_pomu wrote 23 hours 39 min ago:
Cruelty signalling?
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 52 min ago:
I prefer "ideology signalling" so that it's neutral and we can
use it to apply to both sides.
buellerbueller wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
"Virtue signaling" still works because the actor indeed
believes they are being virtuous.
ndsipa_pomu wrote 17 hours 44 min ago:
Since when is it a virtue to needlessly make things harder
for some people?
rootusrootus wrote 15 hours 43 min ago:
I cannot decide to what extent they see it that way.
They certainly have entirely plausible virtuous reasoning
for everything they do. Whether that is what they
actually believe or not, I have no idea. It is hard to
understand the point of view of someone who seems like
causing pain is their only priority, and I prefer to
think that only describes a small fraction of the people
I disagree with politically.
jvandonsel wrote 16 hours 56 min ago:
Since January 2025.
buellerbueller wrote 16 hours 57 min ago:
You would need to ask that of someone who agrees with
their font choices. I am only opining that they probably
have $REASONS that they believe to be virtuous, and that
by calling it virtue signaling, we point that out.
In my time as a righteous woke progressive, it eventually
dawned on me that the other side was just as likely to
believe in the righteousness of their cause, even if I
couldn't understand their reasoning for it. It also
dawned on me that the righteous folks on the other side
of the divide likely see my beliefs and the reasoning by
which I arrived at them as equally baffling.
If both sides believe fully in their righteousness, and
see their opponents as wholly unreasonable, then we will
end up in a non-religious holy war.
The only way to recover is for both sides to turn down
their righteousness.
One small step to do that is to at least try to
understand--without agreeing--why the people with whom
you disagree hold their beliefs, which ones are
inflexible and which are mutable.
ndsipa_pomu wrote 16 hours 31 min ago:
I just don't understand why it would be a virtue to
deliberately make things harder for people. If the font
was neutral in terms of being easy to read, then they
would never have touched it. To my mind, they're making
a "virtue" out of cruelty.
The problem is that we've seen what this kind of
"righteousness" leads to (gas chambers, The Final
Solution, World War II) and yet we're heading down the
same road. There is no reasoning with Nazis.
watwut wrote 20 hours 13 min ago:
I prefer cruelty signaling, because there is profound
difference between the impact of the two on the world.
Insisting on naming things so that "bad thing" and "good
thing" are undistinguishable is not neutral, it is biased and
favors bad actors.
oneeyedpigeon wrote 18 hours 10 min ago:
Sure, but that's immaterial to this context, which seeks an
apolitical term for "says things they don't believe to
curry favour".
watwut wrote 11 hours 7 min ago:
It is material exactly here. The preference for "ideology
signaling" comes from desire to frame both sides as the
same. "Cruelty signaling" is very accurate descriptor. It
does not even suggest right wing only thing, if someone
on the left signals cruelty, they would engage in cruelty
signaling. And if someone on the right performatively
helps poor, they are engaging in virtue signaling.
The trouble is, if the things are called as what they
are, you cant say "both sides are the same". Because one
side is promoting cruelty and the other is not.
> says things they don't believe to curry favour
If you do not believe that trans people should be beating
up, but say so to look manly to your boss, you still
promoted beating of trans.
tstrimple wrote 1 day ago:
Virtue signaling is for liberals. Conservatives prefer shitty
human signaling. Eventually folks will take them for their word I
hope.
vkou wrote 1 day ago:
More than half. Almost everything they do is virtue signaling.
kgwgk wrote 1 day ago:
The funny thing is that they were indeed funding âtransâ mice
research:
> To understand the effects of feminizing sex hormone therapy on
vaccination, we propose to develop a mouse model of
gender-affirming hormone therapy, assess its relevance to human
medicine through singe-cell transcriptome studies, and test the
immune responses of âcisâ vs. âtransâ mice to a HIV
vaccine.
(HTM) [1]: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10849830#descript...
t0lo wrote 1 day ago:
I listened to the economist podcast on that- hilarious in the worst
way- was leading harvard research
jdub wrote 1 day ago:
There are very few ways in which US governance and/or regulation leads
the developed world, but a huge (and surprising) one is the 1990 (!)
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It is astonishingly,
transformationally inclusive, and makes life better for every American
(because everyone needs accessibility to different degrees, at
different times).
Switching from Calibri back to Times New Roman "because DEI" 100%
tracks with this administration's spiteful Project 2025 vandalism.
dramm wrote 1 day ago:
Comic Sans might have been a more appropriate choice. ¯\_(ã)_/¯
IceHegel wrote 1 day ago:
I'm dyslexic and I much prefer to read Times New Roman to Calibri. I
think it's a good move.
Svoka wrote 1 day ago:
I could consider anti-DEI sentiment that 'people jumping the lane' as
morally acceptable (valid by itself but based on wrong assumptions),
but this, this is just evil. Like why would you change font because it
is harder to read for someone?
mjmas wrote 1 day ago:
Looking through a selection of papers on serif vs non-serif fonts the
conclusions seem to be that there is little difference when printed,
but when viewing on-screen sans-serif is preferred.
RobLach wrote 1 day ago:
The ole' turning around a failing effort with a rebrand.
iambateman wrote 1 day ago:
You know what they always sayâ¦never waste a good crisis.
This is our opportunity to tell our friends that neither Times New
Roman nor Calibri are very good fonts.
If theyâre using Wordâand they definitely areâAptos is a better
choice than either.
If they want to look fancy and have a serif in their life, maybe they
could try a little Cambria.
But if they have a twinkle in their eye and seem like they want to
learn, take a moment to introduce them to the wide and glorious world
of Roboto. Tell them about the wonders of medium and light and
semi-bold and extra-bold and wide and display and condensed and custom
ligatures. Give them a taste of what real office typography couldâve
been if Microsoft didnât absolutely destroy it in the 90âs.
Open their mind. Show them the truth. This is your time.
gjvc wrote 19 hours 23 min ago:
it's a joy [1] and especially [1] +Condensed
(HTM) [1]: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto
(HTM) [2]: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Roboto+Condensed
bvan wrote 1 day ago:
Seriously, with all the shit going on in the world, these guys spend
time thinking about the wokeness of computer fonts?! What a clown show.
Strike-through this administration.
joshuaheard wrote 1 day ago:
Most federal courts require documents filed there to be in Times New
Roman font.
BuyMyBitcoins wrote 1 day ago:
Moreover, due to executive order the typeface is now called âTimes
New Americanâ.
herewulf wrote 1 day ago:
BVT NOT TO BE CONFVSED UUITH TIMES OLD ROMAN.
b00ty4breakfast wrote 1 day ago:
yes, so wasteful to select a different font in 2025. Real cost-saving
measure switching from the evil woke-font calibri to the strong
masculine Times New Roman. Thank God Marco Rubio was on the case to
set the universe back into alignment with this big-balled move.
Terry Gilliam at his most deranged couldn't dream up this nonsense.
dsevil wrote 1 day ago:
I've seen some comments about how Times New Roman was replaced with
something else to improve readability by many.
There's an irony: the _Times_ (of London) commissioned it in 1932 to
improve the readability of its newspaper, which previously used a
Didone/Modern style typeface.
I like Times New Roman and I find Calibri, a rounded-corner sans serif,
to be an absolute abomination of milquetoast typography.
dghf wrote 1 day ago:
As others have said, Times New Roman was specifically designed for
newspapers:
* condensed glyph widths, for ease of setting in narrow columns
* high x-heights and short ascenders and descenders, so lines can be
set tighter and more text thus fitted on the page
* robust forms and serifs to allow for the tendency of newsprint to
absorb and spread ink
These features don't necessarily translate to improved readability in
other contexts.
alphabetag675 wrote 1 day ago:
Times New Roman was designed for a time when printing quality was
not that good. With 1080p screen nowadays, that barrier is removed,
so optimization of readability has different constraints.
jimnotgym wrote 1 day ago:
I found that Calibri looks better than TNR on a low dpi screen. The
serifs just make the letters look jagged.
Fnoord wrote 1 day ago:
There's no irony in that: different medium.
The Dutch dev of Calibri commented on the history [1].
He makes a couple of good points, nuances. The main one I liked is
related to your premise: it was that the Times New Roman font was
optimized for printing newspapers whereas his successor was meant for
computer screens.
Ultimately, IMO this is just bullying people with bad eyesight and
dyslexia (and said bullying I can only regard as hatred towards
minorities which reminds me of a different era). My father had MS and
due to that bad eyesight. He had special glasses with a special lens
to read. Of course any font change has a learning curve, but to me
this just hits home as I've seen him struggle to read.
(HTM) [1]: https://nos.nl/l/2594021
Cordiali wrote 1 day ago:
> He had special glasses with a special lens to read.
Bifocals, I'm guessing.
cromulent wrote 1 day ago:
Many people with MS get diplopia, and so need prismatic lenses to
help with the double vision.
Fnoord wrote 1 day ago:
He passed away ten years ago, the glasses were custom-made in
70's or so. He'd close one eye and use the other (better suited
for this). He'd have tremors, including in the eyes. Reading
made him very tired, eventually a friend would read complex
beta literature before him. To me (as kid) the glasses felt
like a huge looking glass.
A friend of my parents also made a custom card deck, with huge
symbols and letters. That way, we could work around his
disability. We always had to work around his disability, and it
regressed but slow variant and he was also too old to get the
medicine which effectively stopped the MS from getting worse.
However, it meant other people who had the quick version or
were younger got more QoL.
I don't think he ever used Calibri. I mean, at that time, he
wasn't into computers anymore. He had all kind of health
isssues due to MS. It pains me to think people like him now
have more difficulty to read letters because of BS decisions
like these just cause NIH or whatever the silly reason must be.
But there's also good news: if it is digital, they can override
the font and such.
cromulent wrote 23 hours 28 min ago:
Sounds like he had lots of good people around him helping
him.
The technical aspects you mention are important. I have
diplopia, and also close one eye. It gets worse in the
evenings. I love paper books and own many, but all my reading
now is on a Kindle, with a huge font. It makes it so much
easier.
Sunspark wrote 19 hours 27 min ago:
Have you tried eye-patching as a therapy to train the
non-dominant eye?
rtkwe wrote 1 day ago:
It may look better but it's harder to read basically across the board
for anyone with difficulty distinguishing letters. Sans serif fonts
are easier for people with dyslexia without going all the way to a
dyslexia specific font. They're also generally far better for people
with all sorts of poor vision.
It really comes down to the fact that it's better to be functional,
forms don't need to /look/ good they need to work well. For aesthetic
things we can still use the pretty fonts.
Fnoord wrote 1 day ago:
For aesthetic or other preferences you change the default font to
whatever you please. The default font shouldn't be about
aesthetics, it should be first and foremost about usability.
Especially on printed media since there it cannot be changed in a
whim.
A couple of years ago I went into archives of Dutch newspapers to
learn whether and how the famine of hunger in Ukraine (known as
Holodomor) was reported back in 1930's. Fuck me, it was hard to
read those excerpts. But it is what it is. OCR could've converted
the font. The problem is, is the OCR accurate? Like, is my search
with keywords having a good SnR, or am I missing out on evidence?
Personally, Times New Roman was likely the reason I did not like
Mozilla Thunderbird. I have to look into that.
MadnessASAP wrote 1 day ago:
> For aesthetic or other preferences you change the default font
to whatever you please.
Ever tried changing the font of a printed document? Or a PDF?
Fnoord wrote 22 hours 32 min ago:
Printed document isn't what I was on about. There the default
should 100% be about accessibility (and then we just want that
by default cause we're used to it).
PDF -> Nope.
.doc(x) -> Sure.
Website, OS, apps (including terminal) -> Sure.
Now regarding PDF I might've tried a long time ago when reading
some old document (like CIA about MKULTRA). I don't remember if
I succeeded. But there are PDF editors out there. I do think it
likely screws layout (esp. larger documents), but that can be
true for .doc(x) as well.
MadnessASAP wrote 11 hours 52 min ago:
I think it would be a smaller issue if it only applied to
digital media. Presumably though this applies to all media.
And I can certainly confirm that changing the font of PDF
will almost always result in a unreadable mess. Something
about how a PDF doesn't have text "blocks" and instead fixes
each character making text reflow almost impossible.
tommica wrote 1 day ago:
> The default font shouldn't be about aesthetics, it should be
first and foremost about usability.
The thing about usability is that it's both objective and
subjective, and one can argue that aesthetics is part of
usability. For example, I find writing code much more pleasant
with Comic Code font, and I can imagine that there are other
people that would hate it.
rtkwe wrote 20 hours 30 min ago:
Sure but I think we could agree it looking nice ranks lower
than being structurally more difficult to read for people? If
there were a freely preinstalled option that was both sure but
given the choice between functional and aesthetic readability
wins hands down.
codechicago277 wrote 1 day ago:
Off topic but did you find anything interesting? I spent a few
days researching Holodomor and was surprised how poorly
understood it still is even today, and badly reported at the
time. Good propaganda case study. Thereâs a dramatic film about
the reporting too, Mr. Jones (2019).
vintermann wrote 1 day ago:
I haven't researched it explicitly, but I do come across "what
happens in the wider world" notices in small historical
newspapers and sometimes I search to see what it was about. Saw
a mention about some general winning an important victory,
searched his name, found out he was one of the whites, and the
first thing claimed about him was that he only came in "once
the war was already lost".
Fnoord wrote 1 day ago:
What I found was that yes, it was reported about, but very
little. The notable person who did research the event, Gareth
Jones, is indeed an interesting story (he was also referenced
to by the newspapers). I believe it was underreported, but we
could've known. Helped, now that is a different question I
don't dare to answer. The Soviets used disgusting tactics in
Eastern Europe, see the book Bloodlands.
gjvc wrote 1 day ago:
Roboto Condensed's description reads like something written by wine
journalist:
Roboto has a dual nature. It has a mechanical skeleton and the forms
are largely geometric. At the same time, the font features friendly and
open curves. While some grotesks distort their letterforms to force a
rigid rhythm, Roboto doesnât compromise, allowing letters to be
settled into their natural width. This makes for a more natural reading
rhythm more commonly found in humanist and serif types.
A Sancerre with a long, sweet finish.
clickety_clack wrote 1 day ago:
The only non-partisan choice is comic sans.
UncleOxidant wrote 1 day ago:
There's a new serif in town.
alexandre_m wrote 1 day ago:
Underrated comment.
khazhoux wrote 1 day ago:
> "This formatting standard aligns with the Presidentâs One Voice for
Americaâs Foreign Relations directive, underscoring the
Departmentâs responsibility to present a unified, professional voice
in all communications," it added.
This administration truly sets a high standard for professional
communication...
> S.V. Dáte, HuffPostâs senior White House correspondent, asked the
White House earlier this month who suggested Budapest, Hungary, as the
location for an upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin. White House
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: âYour mom did.â White
House Communications Director Steven Cheung then followed up: âYour
mom.â
(HTM) [1]: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politic...
SpaceManNabs wrote 1 day ago:
This is silly as Montserrat is the only true choice.
shadowtree wrote 1 day ago:
Good - Calibri is not open, badly supported on Linux et al.
HN should rejoice in the US gov using a font that is open and truly
cross platform.
jeroenhd wrote 1 day ago:
Calibri works just fine on my machine. Just download the font using
one of the many font packages available in your distro (i.e. [1] )
I don't think it's included by default but the font itself will just
work once you install it.
As for open fonts (can fonts even be truly closed in the first
place?), Times New Roman is just as closed and proprietary as Calibri
is.
(HTM) [1]: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-ms-win11
chrismorgan wrote 1 day ago:
Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New, Calibri, Cambria⦠all of these
fonts are proprietary.
But there are open-source metrically-compatible alternatives to all
of them, commonly included in Linux distributions and/or office
suites like LibreOffice.
Probably the most popular set is [1] , with Tinos, Arimo, Cousine,
and in the extended set Carlito and Caladea. The former most popular
set is probably [2] , with Liberation {Serif, Sans, Mono}.
But a given system is definitely less likely to have a Calibri
alternative than a Times New Roman alternative.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts
(HTM) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts
Sunspark wrote 19 hours 17 min ago:
The Croscore fonts ARE the Liberation fonts, just renamed.
I keep both for naming compatibility and also because the 1.0
Liberation versions had truetype hinting (2.0 and up did not).
Arodex wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, we got it, you hate accessibility and dyslexic people.
ikamm wrote 1 day ago:
Times New Roman is proprietary as well
dsevil wrote 1 day ago:
I think there's clones of it that aren't.
simondotau wrote 1 day ago:
As far as paper copies of laws and proclamations are concerned, the
government can print them out in Wingdings for all I care. 99.999% of
people will never see the physical paper. What matters are the digital
files which, along with PDF, should be available to view in any font I
want, whether Times New Roman or Comis Sans or braille.
1970-01-01 wrote 1 day ago:
They should be digitally signed PDFs. It's nearly 2026 and trivial to
do.
rat87 wrote 1 day ago:
There's Clickbait and then this awful headline designed to give people
heart attacks.
Who care about fonts? Boring.
Why not jazz it up by mentioning coups during an administration that
previously tried to pull of a coup attempt. Any administration
officials names and coup should not be in the same sentence unless they
attempt another one(or unless it's talking about the previous one).
thayne wrote 1 day ago:
> calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a
"wasteful" diversity move
And changing it back to Times New Roman isn't wasteful?
nonethewiser wrote 1 day ago:
Blinken did change it to Calibri at the recommendation of the
diversity and inclusion office. Whether or not it was justified is
another matter, but there is no question it was a DEI initiative.
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 43 min ago:
That wasn't the point; the point was about the hypocrisy of calling
it "wasteful".
stego-tech wrote 1 day ago:
It really is just a bunch of petulant (predominantly, but not
exclusively) old fucks throwing tantrums at any form of progress or
change whatsoever, huh.
morshu9001 wrote 1 day ago:
Wasn't there was a previous "coup" that changed it from TNR to Calibri?
TNR is nicer though.
0xbadcafebee wrote 1 day ago:
> calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a
"wasteful" diversity move,
> The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to
Calibri, a modern sans-serif font,
> saying this was a more accessible font for people with disabilities
Man, helping disabled people is so woke. Who was the woke politician
who made the government support disabled americans?
rorylawless wrote 1 day ago:
This is approaching Saparmurat Niyazov levels of weirdness.
thesagan wrote 1 day ago:
Once again Garamond is passed over. I truly live in dark times.
BLKNSLVR wrote 1 day ago:
The princess and the pea.
PaulHoule wrote 1 day ago:
Funny but my impression is that these days kerning is usually pretty
bad with Serifed fonts in, at the very least, Microsoft Word,
Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe
Illustrator.
It is not so bad if you are using it for paragraphs but I can't stand
the way serifed fonts come out if I am setting display text for a
poster unless I manually take over and adjust the kerning. After I had
this problem I was wondering if I was the only one or what other people
did so I looked at posters people had put up around campus and had a
really hard time finding posters where people were using serifed fonts
in large sizes and my guess is people either start out with sans or
they tried something with serifs but changed their mind because it
looked wrong.
snickerbockers wrote 1 day ago:
Why the fuck does anybody care? Also is there no way to view these
documents in the font of you choice????
The OP successfully included excerpts from the order without changing
to times new roman so CLEARLY this is not insurmountable for anybody
who actually notices irrelevant details such as this.
xrd wrote 1 day ago:
I for one am grateful someone is finally standing up to these lunatic
radical typographers and their diversity, equity and italics tyranny.
dgeiser13 wrote 1 day ago:
The ole DEIA font.
oldsklgdfth wrote 1 day ago:
Slightly tangential, is there any chance this is motivated by profit or
someone making money off this?
Otherwise, seems kinda benign and random.
embedding-shape wrote 1 day ago:
Attention is a limited resource. When people spend it on something,
they cannot spend it on something else at the same time. If you want
to get away with something unpopular, do lots of unpopular things so
the really bad stuff gets mixed in with all the rest. From the
outside, it all looks very benign and random.
rcpt wrote 1 day ago:
It's probably to ensure people keep talking about "woke" which tends
to be good for the right.
icecube123 wrote 1 day ago:
Its exactly this. Choosing a font that makes things easier for
disabled people, and those with limited sight is far too âwokeâ
for 2025.
ivanjermakov wrote 1 day ago:
Times New Roman is extremely common and often the only accepted font
for official documents and colloquial works in post-soviet countries:
[1] .
I have only bad memories of using it since I directly associate it with
endless formatting fixes for my diploma and course works.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2018-12-10_rossijskim_chinovnika...
Fnoord wrote 1 day ago:
I chuckle at the thought mr. Putin was unable to parse some important
US document, complained, and mr. Trump's minion promptly fixed the
issue!
actionfromafar wrote 1 day ago:
And bad keming. Though, thatâs technically not a fault of the font
itself.
giantrobot wrote 1 day ago:
Subtle and clever. You got a laugh out of me.
JSR_FDED wrote 1 day ago:
Such a dingbat move
weinzierl wrote 1 day ago:
Leaders and typefaces:
In 1941 Adolf Hitler personally gave order to make the use of the
Antiqua mandatory and forbade the use of Fraktur and Schwabacher
typefaces.
(HTM) [1]: https://ligaturix.de/bormann.htm
dang wrote 1 day ago:
(We detached this comment from [1] . It's fine and interesting, but
the offtopicness of you-know-who is a bit too agitating at the top of
the thread.)
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46224867
1970-01-01 wrote 1 day ago:
Forgive my ignorance but this seems to be one of the most neutral
things Hitler did. He just didn't like the font so he ordered it to
be changed. Equivalent to your boss ordering tabs be used instead of
spaces. After the war was lost the arguments just continued.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_disput...
goku12 wrote 23 hours 5 min ago:
> He just didn't like the font so he ordered it to be changed.
There is your answer. He imposed his will - that's what dictators
do. You have to be careful when the reason for any costly change is
one individual's personal preferences. It's a bad omen.
> Equivalent to your boss ordering tabs be used instead of spaces.
That's not always equivalent, especially if it is to set a
standard. Obviously, some people using spaces and the others using
tabs is not ideal in situations you're referring to. It's also fine
to change the standard, if they find a significant problem with the
current convention. But if your boss wants it changed, and their
only explanation is their dislike of the status-quo, then that's a
red flag. The problem isn't very serious right now, but could grow
into one in the future and you have to be on the watch.
nl wrote 1 day ago:
I rather assumed so as well, but a big of digging turns up a whole
history: [1] Surprisingly to me the Fraktur typeface was the
traditional "German" typeface but was disliked by Hitler.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_disp...
loeg wrote 1 day ago:
As they say, "Hitler drank water."
viraptor wrote 1 day ago:
It didn't happen in isolation though. There were a few changes that
used aesthetics as a culture influence and what being properly
German should mean. Another one which was more explicit was music
[1] It was literally anti the idea of diversity and inclusion. Much
like this change.
And just like with the font, that shaped preferences for years.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_Nazi_Germany
1970-01-01 wrote 1 day ago:
That's still using their other culture choices to manufacture a
problem with producing consistency in typeface. It's a stretch.
Any good (don't take this out of context, please) leader will
settle these kinds of trivial internal disputes and move onto
important problems.
viraptor wrote 22 hours 27 min ago:
I'm not sure why you mention consistency. The cable explicitly
says it's a) for the decorum and b) anti dei. That's literally
the same reason for the music restrictions - that's why I'm
bringing it up.
actionfromafar wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah it was so the occupied peoples could read the edicts better.
Sp perhaps not so neutral, after all.
amwet wrote 1 day ago:
âI want a new font so itâs easier to readâ isnât neutral?
actionfromafar wrote 1 day ago:
Not when you are the aggressor in WW2?
I guess if Russia invaded Western Europe and Putin decided to
switch from Cyrillic to Latin script so the subjugated peoples
would more easily read and learn Russian, that would be neutral
too?
irishcoffee wrote 1 day ago:
That isnât a genuine argument.
Font face != different language + different alphabet.
Font, still a bad argument but technically correct. Font
face, nah.
actionfromafar wrote 1 day ago:
About the "bad argument", I can't argue with you, because
I'm not the one arguing. You'll have to take it up with the
author of these lines:
"In a hundred years, our language will be the European
language. The nations of the east, the north and the west
will, to communicate with us, learn our language. The
prerequisite for this: The script called Gothic is replaced
by the script we have called Latin so far"
(Besides, what's so strange about transposing Cyrillic to
Latin? It happens all the time even today when people don't
want to or can't switch keyboard layouts.)
nl wrote 1 day ago:
Fraktur actually does use a partially different alphabet.
For example it uses the Long s: [1] and Half-r:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
(HTM) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_rotunda
pinkmuffinere wrote 1 day ago:
I tend to agree with you, many people are passionate about
typefaces, and dictators are no exception. [Passion about typeface]
seems to be a low-signal detector for dictators. I'm passionate
about lasagna, and I'll bet Mussolini was too -- but that probably
doesn't mean I'm a fascist.
fainpul wrote 21 hours 23 min ago:
But if you go around and tell everyone you meet that they're
doing it wrong and that lasagna MUST be prepared exactly the way
you do it, because it's the one and only right way, then you're a
lasagna-nazi :)
vessenes wrote 1 day ago:
If you read the article, Calibri usage was instituted during the
Biden administration. So, there's probably a diversity of government
styles that get involved with typefaces.
watwut wrote 1 day ago:
Calibri is designed for screen use and Times New Roman for
printing. As usually, there is a practical option and conservative
option.
But stakes are quite low here. Some bureaucrats will have nearly
undetectably harder time to read Trump speaches
denkmoon wrote 1 day ago:
Fascism relies on politicisation of aesthetic
actionfromafar wrote 1 day ago:
How is that downvoted? You canât seriously disagree?
PaulHoule wrote 1 day ago:
See V is for Vendetta, I would argue there is a sort of seduction
in the Baudrillard sense involved.
apercu wrote 1 day ago:
The current administration will do anything to distract folks from the
corruption, fraud, grift and incompetence.
And it works!
Havoc wrote 1 day ago:
US has genuinely lost it
It genuinely feels like someone worked out that you don't actually need
to build a better stealth bomber than the B2. You just need to
infiltrate government enough to have them debate what fonts are woke
Then I think "nah surely not. can't be that easy". And then next
week...another insane thing comes out of US republican camp. I'm
starting to think one does indeed not need B2s to defeat an enemy
rootusrootus wrote 1 day ago:
Go visit the popular hangouts for folks of the far right persuasion
and you learn pretty quickly that this stuff is absolutely important
to them, and they get spun up about it. What you don't see discussed
is policy. It's almost 100% outrage about cultural issues and pretty
much any reason to hate the left. Never substance.
To be fair, in response to this dynamic the left has gotten pretty
good at focusing on hate for the other side, too. We all lose when
nobody wants to talk policy any more.
embedding-shape wrote 1 day ago:
> [1] > window.getComputedStyle(document.querySelector('.entry-content
> p')).fontFamily
> '"Instrument Sans", sans-serif'
I guess The White House hasn't received the memo yet about how
important serifs is for "presenting a unified, professional voice in
all communications". What a joke.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/addres...
legitster wrote 1 day ago:
> "To restore decorum and professionalism to the Departmentâs written
work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the
Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface."
So to reiterate, the department decided to move on from the 1992
default Word font to the 2007 Word default (1 year after it was no
longer the default).
Nothing is safe from politics when even a font choice has become
"woke".
throwacct wrote 1 day ago:
Could anyone please explain how this is "news" worthy? There are
literally more pressing issues (inflation, wars, etc), and covering
this is asinine, to say the least.
jazzyjackson wrote 1 day ago:
The story is that people with better things to do are spending their
time on this
marcusverus wrote 18 hours 57 min ago:
This argument has never, in all of human history, been made in good
faith.
deadbabe wrote 1 day ago:
Similarly, under the Biden administration there was a push for memory
safety and adopting the Rust programming language.
Now memory safety sounds too woke, and Trump administration will be
moving back to pure C.
bakies wrote 1 day ago:
This admin does like Roman stuff- like their salute
mhd wrote 1 day ago:
Don't a lot of courts use/mandate Century? Just use that. Better than
TNR. If you can't afford a custom fontâ¦
Havoc wrote 1 day ago:
This is why I'm seriously considering learning Chinese. Next 50 years
won't be US lead.
When senior government officials are spending time & public
mindshare/attention on whether a particular font is or is not diverse
then you know it is game over.
The details don't matter...this being a topic at all is the news
SpaceManNabs wrote 1 day ago:
pushing for more literacy at scale is usually a good thing.
this approach is garbage, but i find your second line a bit odd.
it is also funny you bring up china because china changed their
entire character system for diversity reasons (less educated people
couldn't read).
Untit1ed wrote 1 day ago:
You certainly won't have to worry about them changing fonts as
easily...
CodingJeebus wrote 1 day ago:
Read up on the state of the Chinese economy, itâs not a given
theyâll be in the drivers seat long term either.
Havoc wrote 1 day ago:
I know they're leveraged to the hilt, their demographics are shaky
AF etc.
...but end of the day productive capacity is what matters. I don't
see anyone close on that mix of pace, tech, low cost, ability to
execute and scale.
A strong argument could be made on any of those metrics that
someone could beat them fair and square, but the whole
blend...there is nobody even competing in same league and that lead
looks like it'll last rest of my lifetime
A_D_E_P_T wrote 1 day ago:
> their demographics are shaky AF
Every major country's demographics are shaky. Japan and S.Korea
are already shrinking. The US is propped up by, uh, low-quality
immigration, and fertility has nevertheless dropped to record
lows. The large countries of Europe are either basket-cases,
tinderboxes, or both. Germany and Italy haven't had
above-replacement TFR since 1970!
China's not doing great, but having a population reservoir of
1.4B can make up for a lot of deficiencies. If everybody shrinks
or becomes utterly dysfunctional, I'd bet that a vast,
productive, essentially monoethnic nation weathers the storm
better than the rest.
hs586 wrote 1 day ago:
I just realized that if you google the font (e.g. "Calibri font"), you
get the search results in that font. Neat!
_bohm wrote 1 day ago:
Works for lots of other fonts too :)
anilakar wrote 1 day ago:
> present a unified, professional voice in all communications
Might want to start by banning tweeting then.
ModernMech wrote 1 day ago:
Professionalism: "Quiet piggy. Are you stupid? You don't have to
embarrass our guest by asking a question like that. You're a terrible
reporter. Horrible. Insubordinate. You're ugly both inside and out,
and a nasty person."
WhyOhWhyQ wrote 1 day ago:
Is Calibri actually more accessible? Every step of this story seems
pointless and fake.
jimbob45 wrote 1 day ago:
Anecdotal but the new default Office font Aptos seems much better
than both TNR and Calibri.
ajross wrote 1 day ago:
On a screen, vs. Times New Roman? Absolutely, and it isn't at all
close. Serifs on even the highest DPI displays look pretty terrible
when compared with print, and lose readability tests every time
they're measured.
WhyOhWhyQ wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting. The Wikipedia page for Times New Roman has a pretty
fun blurb printed in the newspaper when they first implemented it:
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman?st_source=ai...
shagie wrote 1 day ago:
One of the things that image shows is the slightly higher density
of the Times version (compare row by row) allowing the paper to
put more text on a page and thus reduce some of the costs.
This appears to be done by increasing the height of the lower
case letters in the Times side while reducing the height of the
capital letters at the same time. This then was also combined
with a reduction in the size of some of the serifs which are
measured against the height of the lowercase letter (compare the
'T' and the following 'h').
The Times is similarly readable at the smaller font size than the
modern serif font - and scaling the modern font to the same
density of text would have made the modern font less readable.
Part of that, it appears is the finer detail (as alluded to in
the penultimate paragraph) - compare the '3' on each side.
thaumasiotes wrote 19 hours 18 min ago:
> the slightly higher density of the Times version (compare row
by row)
I don't think that's the comparison you want to draw? The rows
appear to hold very similar amounts of text.
But the rows on the left, in Times New Roman, are shorter than
the rows on the right. So even though "one row" holds the same
amount of text, one column-inch of Times New Roman holds more
rows.
The Times New Roman looks more readable to me because it has
thicker strokes. This isn't really an issue in a digital font;
you can't accidentally apply a thin layer of black to a pixel
and let the color underneath show through.
sroerick wrote 1 day ago:
This feels more like Microsoft lock-in than anything else. But I
don't know how that conspiracy would actually work.
What is involved in changing the font for a government agency?
legitster wrote 1 day ago:
If I remember correctly Microsoft did a bunch of studies back in the
day and found the Calibri had some of the best readability across a
range of visibility and reading impairments (like dyslexia).
Serif fonts have some readability features of their own, specifically
for printed word.
icecube123 wrote 1 day ago:
You are correct. Microsoft invested significantly to create a
modern properly designed font that is easy to read on a variety of
screens, prints clearly and consistently, scales well, and can do
italics, bold, etc well.
I think this came out back with Office 2007 or something. I believe
Aptos is actually the new next generation font that should
generally be considered an enhancement to Calibri.
While Microsoft isnt great at many things, their investment in font
design and support is outstanding.
papercrane wrote 1 day ago:
One of the reasons Calibri was selected over Times New Roman was it
has a lower rate of OCR transcription errors, making documents using
it easier for people using screen readers.
carlosjobim wrote 1 day ago:
That doesn't make much sense, since a typewriter will neither type
Calibri nor Times New Roman. And OCR should only be needed for type
written documents, because any document made with Calibri or TNR is
already digital.
funnybeam wrote 1 day ago:
We have a process at work where clients export information from
their database as a pdf which they email to us so that we can ocr
it and insert into our database.
No one else seems to think this is bat shit insane
contact9879 wrote 1 day ago:
printed documents, images, horribly inaccessible pdfs, horribly
inaccessible websites
carlosjobim wrote 1 day ago:
> Printed documents
- Use the original, which is digital.
> Images
- Use the original, which is digital.
> horribly inaccessible pdfs
- Use the original, which has real text in the PDF
> horribly inaccessible websites
- All text on any web site is digital. Nobody uses OCR on a
website.
A massive paper producer like the government shouldn't adopt
their type setting to people who are using technology wrongly.
contact9879 wrote 1 day ago:
it's easier to mandate font than to excise all processes
within the fed bureaucracy that result in these.
images being digital have no bearing on OCR ability
carlosjobim wrote 17 hours 34 min ago:
Images: use the original, which is a digital text document
and not an image.
Unless they are making documents on typewriters. And in
those cases neither Biden or Trump font is an option.
contact9879 wrote 1 day ago:
an example from today (pdf warning):
(HTM) [1]: https://www.ntsb.gov/news/Documents/National%20Defen...
carlosjobim wrote 17 hours 35 min ago:
God damn...
Why didn't they fax it back and forth a few times as well,
just for good measure?
blueflow wrote 1 day ago:
Link on that, as OCR should be more reliable with Times New Roman
due to significant serifs.
nerevarthelame wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know what studies Blinken's State Department considered,
but here are 2 studies on the matter. [1] : "For Latin, it was
observed that individual letters with serif cause
misclassification on (b,h), (u,n), (o,n), (o,u)." [2] : [Figure 5
shows higher accuracy for the two sans-serif fonts, Arial and
DejaVu compared to Times New Roman, across all OCR engines]
(HTM) [1]: https://www.academia.edu/72263493/Effect_of_Typeface_Des...
(HTM) [2]: https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10220037
orwin wrote 1 day ago:
I don't have link on that, but the main difficulty with OCR isn't
the OCR part (not anymore at least), it's the "clean up" part,
and serifs are a pain in the ass, especially on sightly crumpled
paper. My use case was an ERP plugin that digitalized and read to
receipt to autofill reimbursement demands, and since most receipt
use sans-serif fonts, it was mostly fine, but some jokers use
serifed font (mostly on receipts you get when using cash, not
credit card receipts) and the error rate jumped from like 1% to
13% (not sure about the 1%, it might be a story i told myself to
make me feel better, it was a decade ago, before i pivoted to
network from AI. I always take the best decision it seems)
papercrane wrote 1 day ago:
The memo at the time said the serifs can cause OCR issues.
(HTM) [1]: https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/1615486871571935232
opo wrote 1 day ago:
Just because they claimed it, doesn't make it true. OCR and
screen reader software in 2023 did not have problems with
serifs.
epolanski wrote 1 day ago:
This feels like dystopia, sane management or administrations should
delegate this stuff to experts, not politicians.
We live in the world were everything is now "vibed" really.
vvpan wrote 1 day ago:
How far has the migration away from TNR to Calibri progressed? Is it
redoing everything or is it just abandoning an incomplete ongoing
migration that mostly just started?
yincrash wrote 1 day ago:
Even if you believe the previous administration switching fonts was
virtue signaling, then by the same logic you have to also believe this
is just virtue signalling.
blueflow wrote 1 day ago:
No? If signalling led to an decision, the reversal is not
automatically signalling based. Calibri is just not a good font.
cogman10 wrote 1 day ago:
I'm really out of the loop on this.
What virtue is being signaled by who?
I know people get real touchy about fonts, but I have a hard time
understanding why this is even a news article.
amiga386 wrote 1 day ago:
Per the State Department in 2023: [1] > fonts like Times New Roman
have serifs ("wings" and "feet") or decorative, angular features
that can introduce accessibility issues for individuals with
disabilities who use Optical Character Recognition technology or
screen readers. It can also cause visual recognition issues for
individuals with learning disabilities.
> On January 4, 2023, in support of the Department's iCount
Campaign on disability inclusion (reftels), Secretary Blinken
directed the Department to use a more accessible font. Calibri has
no wings and feet and is the default font in Microsoft products and
was recommended as an accessibility best practice by the
Secretary's Office of Diversity and Inclusion in collaboration with
the Executive Secretariat and the Bureau of Global Talent
Management's Office of Accessibility and Accommodations.
In 2023, the US State Department signalled how virtuous it was, by
moving from the previously-default MS Office font to the
then-currently-default MS Office font. The current MS Office
default font is Aptos, place your bets on what the State Department
is going to switch the font to in 3 years time.
As far as I know, font choice has no zero effect on screen readers,
which ask compatible software what words are on screen and read
them out. There is evidence that serifs cause visual recognition
issues for some individuals, but there's also evidence they aid
recognition for different individuals.
It probably helped everyone to choose 14pt Calibri over 12pt Times
New Roman, as the font is more legible on LCD screens.
The virtue being signalled by the current administration is that
everything their predecessors did was wrong and they're literally
going to reverse everything out of sheer pettiness. If anything,
they should acknowledge the president's long friendship with
Epstein and pick Gill Sans as the default. That would be the
ultimate "anti-woke" move I think.
(HTM) [1]: https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/1615486871571935232
Eduard wrote 1 day ago:
Just guessing from what is written in the article: Calibri once was
chosen by the former administration for accessibility reasons.
Maybe the virtue signaling being that Calibri isn't great with
respect to accessibility (and IMHO wasn't even designed for it in
the first place).
lurk2 wrote 1 day ago:
Calibri is a Sans Serif font and because it has been the default
Microsoft Office font for more than a decade, it is fake email job
haver coded (i.e. it appeals to young and middle-aged women who
work in HR, this demographic being predominantly Democrat). Times
New Roman is a Serif font which looks old and official to cater to
boomers and has Roman in it to appeal to Zoomers who want to RETVRN
with a V to tradition.
(I didnât read the article as this is a non-story, but Iâm
definitely right).
tom_ wrote 1 day ago:
As if anybody would be daft enough to deny that you are of course
absolutely right, [1] has this additional detail:
> Mr. Rubio's directive, under the subject line "Return to
Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All
Department Paper,"
(HTM) [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/us/politics/rubio-sta...
epolanski wrote 1 day ago:
Because politicians are making political choices on fonts rather
than leaving those matters to technicians.
aprilthird2021 wrote 1 day ago:
Yep, I've seen what craziness happens when the admin is woke, and
I've seen the craziness when it's "anti-woke" and I preferred woke.
At least woke didn't kidnap people into unmarked vans for writing a
college newspaper article. I don't agree with woke, but they won't
send me to Guatemala torture prison bc I don't agree
itsjustjordan wrote 1 day ago:
Slightly related but today I learned if you Google a font the site
changes to that font.
int0x29 wrote 1 day ago:
Ah yes Calibri is now "DEI". Rubio don't you have a real job?
gravy wrote 1 day ago:
Didn't I read somewhere that serif fonts are better for dyslexia
pinkmuffinere wrote 1 day ago:
When I read the headline i thought âwell obviously they donât mean
Marco Rubio, there must be some famous publicist or somethingâ.
Cannot believe it actually was Marco Rubio, lol
wavemode wrote 1 day ago:
The entire thing literally reads like an Onion piece. If I'd read
this exact article in The Onion I would've considered it brilliant
comedy.
wvh wrote 22 hours 39 min ago:
It's becoming increasingly hard to distinguish an Onion article
from actual media. Post-truth indeed.
n3storm wrote 1 day ago:
with current timeline expect the unexpected
tstrimple wrote 1 day ago:
What do you mean the TIRE company actually reviews restaurants?
vintermann wrote 1 day ago:
Spending time on something like this suggests he doesn't actually
have much to do besides throwing his power around.
seb1204 wrote 1 day ago:
Well, you can come up with this position or view on a 5 minute
toilet break after reading something that rallied you up. Once you
have a voice you can trigger an avalanche with very little it
seems.
3rodents wrote 1 day ago:
Finally, some good news from this administration.
rjzzleep wrote 1 day ago:
People will often use their power to do seemingly meaningless
things, when they don't know how to solve the actual problems on
their plate.
mcny wrote 1 day ago:
Marco Rubio famously doesn't have the authority to do what is
arguably his job.
> Trump envoy Witkoff reportedly advised Kremlin official on
Ukraine peace deal
A more dignified Secretary of State would have resigned when this
news surfaced.
rootusrootus wrote 15 hours 35 min ago:
> A more dignified Secretary of State would have resigned when
this news surfaced.
I remain impressed at the number of longstanding Republican
politicians that have been willing to sacrifice their dignity
and likely their political career on the Trump altar. It is a
one-way trip for their credibility, and when Trump is gone what
are they going to do?
The only interesting right wing politician to me right now is
MTG. And that's an odd position to find myself in. She is a
clown, but suddenly she seems much more real for a moment.
Like we might have caught a glimpse of the actual person. I am
faintly curious how her political career shapes up over the
next few years (assuming her resignation does happen and is not
the actual end of her ambitions).
vkou wrote 1 day ago:
It's on brand for his party.
throw03172019 wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm surprised this administration did not chose Comic Sans as the
default font.
alamortsubite wrote 1 day ago:
Can Comic Sans do all caps?
user____name wrote 1 day ago:
Rubio looks more like a Papyrus person.
infotainment wrote 1 day ago:
I still canât believe they switched to Calibri at all; the only
people who should be using Calibri are people who donât realize that
Microsoft Word lets you pick other fonts.
I do wish theyâd gone for a classier serif though; Garamond was right
there.
publicdebates wrote 1 day ago:
I'm a Kings Caslon kinda guy myself. Partial to those more practical
fonts. Can't beat 1800s print, they perfected the art by that point.
adamhartenz wrote 1 day ago:
You think the US govenment would go for a French typeface?
ben_w wrote 1 day ago:
There's a certain je ne sais quoi to the US government's
relationship with France.
Le problème avec les Américains, c'est qu'ils n'ont pas de mot
pour «entrepreneur».
weinzierl wrote 1 day ago:
To be fair, they did choose a Roman one - one with proper Italics
even.
HPsquared wrote 1 day ago:
Does anyone else like to change the font on news articles using Inspect
Element?
Also in Word etc, if I've got to spend a lot of time in a large
document, I'll usually edit the paragraph body style temporarily to
something sans serif. It's just better on screen.
umanwizard wrote 1 day ago:
Funnily enough this story, despite extolling the virtues of
sans-serif fonts for reading on screens, is typeset in a serif font.
lateforwork wrote 1 day ago:
> Does anyone else like to change the font on news articles using
Inspect Element?
Yes, for sites that use unreadably thin fonts, such as
(HTM) [1]: https://stratechery.com
steanne wrote 1 day ago:
i change it with refont
(HTM) [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refont/
Bender wrote 1 day ago:
Perhaps it is time to get traction on "tabs vs spaces". /s
If they want to look like a proper government then the correct answer
is monospace and in ALL CAPS just like FAA NOTAMS, obviously.
seydor wrote 1 day ago:
Does that mean there will be a Times Caesar , a Times Lady , a Times
Mistress and Universal Times new Rome Time? What a Time to be alive
gowld wrote 1 day ago:
Calibri was the default MS Word from 2007 until July 2023, when Aptos
took over.
Calibri became the State font in Jan 2023.
sombragris wrote 1 day ago:
I support the change, though the rationale used for it seems to me to
be nonsense.
Times New Roman might not be the world's most beautiful font, but at
least is a little bit less atrocious than Calibri (which is awful). So,
whatever the rationale invoked, I welcome the change.
Sometimes, when I have to work on documents which will be shared with
many users, I use Times New Roman as serif, and Arial as a sans serif.
Both choices are (admittedly in my very subjective opinion) better than
Calibri, and it's almost guaranteed that every PC will have these fonts
available, or at least exact metric equivalents of them.
cratermoon wrote 1 day ago:
Is it too off-topic or controversial to note that in January 1941 in an
edict signed by Martin Bormann,
head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf
Hitler,
the Nazis called for a ban on the future use of Judenlettern (Jewish
fonts) like Fraktur?
< [1] >
(HTM) [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20151207071605/http://historyweird...
cratermoon wrote 1 day ago:
Speaking of DEI:
Stanley Morison, the inventor of Times New Roman, in collaboration with
Victor Lardent, was one of the founders of The Guild of the Pope's
Peace, an organization created to promote Pope Benedict XV's calls for
peace in the face of the First World War. On the imposition of
conscription in 1916 during First World War, he was a conscientious
objector, and was imprisoned. < [1] >
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Morison#Early_life_and_c...
hbogert wrote 1 day ago:
The left and right signalling is such a waste of everyone's time and
effort. Reactive pettiness
miltonlost wrote 1 day ago:
Is it "signalling" when the left's change was for an accessibility
reason, to enable more people to be able to easily read? Signaling
means there's no tangible benefit to the change, so the Blinken's
switch to a sans-serif font would not be signaling.
Rubio, however, specifically pointed out the symbolic (and malicious)
gesture of his whole switch back to Times New Roman.
The left didn't react pettily. Please stop thinking the left are the
right are the same when the facts show they are not. The left's
change was for a demonstrative benefit. The right is doing it so fuck
over people. You think these are the same.
mathgradthrow wrote 15 hours 50 min ago:
>Is it "signalling" when the left's change was for an accessibility
reason, to enable more people to be able to easily read?
Uh, yes.
SpicyLemonZest wrote 1 day ago:
I think the concept of an accessible font is signaling. I don't
think that Times New Roman is actually less legible than Calibri,
and have never seen research claiming to find that Times New Roman
in particular or serifs in general pose accessibility problems.
estearum wrote 1 day ago:
"Decisions I know nothing about are signaling" is a phenomenally
uncurious approach to life.
foldr wrote 1 day ago:
I easily found some research by searching Google scholar: [1]
It's not a big difference, but apparently TNR was the worst of
the fonts tested for OCR.
But anyway, there was no "signaling" about the change to Calibri.
No-one ever tried to make a political issue out of it the way
Rubio is now.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2021/109668/109668.pdf
SpicyLemonZest wrote 1 day ago:
Iâm not sure what you think I mean by âsignalingâ. This
is a study of OCR performance, with no attempt to measure
practical accessibility issues caused by the font difference
which you and I agree is not big. Iâm still very skeptical
that even a single State Department employeeâs ability to do
a good job depends on which font the department uses.
If you say that it doesnât matter whether changing the font
had a large practical impact, because itâs a gesture in the
right direction or helps build a culture of accessibility, I
would classify that as signaling.
foldr wrote 1 day ago:
Classify it how you like, but a gesture towards building a
culture of accessibility (if indeed thatâs what this was)
is hardly comparable to an attempt to score points against
political opponents.
tyleo wrote 1 day ago:
Never before has a font change been so politically divisive.
Iâll personally be taking my votes to supporters of Helvetica next
election.
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 35 min ago:
Maybe not, but the BBC's use (and subsequent dropping) of Gill Sans
comes close!
hnarn wrote 1 day ago:
Helvetica is great for signage, but in my opinion it isn't great for
longer texts.
dghf wrote 23 hours 3 min ago:
Wasn't it originally intended for signage, advertising, titles,
other display text, etc., rather than for body text?
RajBhai wrote 1 day ago:
I have a couple of thoughts about this.
Firstly, I thought sans-serif typefaces were encouraged for digital
media because they read better than serif fonts. But now that high
pixel density displays have permeated the market, this might be a moot
point.
On another note, I wonder how much of the hate TNR gets stems from its
ubiquity for having been installed on almost all personal computers for
the past n decades.
Paganis are beautifully designed cars, but the labelling of buttons and
toggles inside the center console look cheap (IMO) because their font
seems straight out of a quickly made flyer designed by bored teacher
who just discovered Word Art.
Cipater wrote 20 hours 48 min ago:
Pagani interiors look so plastic and tacky. Why do they make the
interior of such beautiful, expensive cars look so cheap?
IAmBroom wrote 1 day ago:
My understanding has always been that serif fonts read better for
long text, and sans-serif for short text - so signage in Arial and
policy statements in Times New Roman.
And Comic Sans for letters sent to friends finishing design school,
obviously.
There are all sorts of statistical rules falling out of studies about
where the long/short divide is, ambient lighting, blah blah blah -
but human vision is even more variable than most biological
quantities, so in the end general rules are the best one can really
do.
Here of course, it's nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs,
while the captain targets the next iceberg "to teach the ice a
lesson!"
nixpulvis wrote 1 day ago:
I want to read a study that compares what readers estimate for much
effort was put into producing the same page of text in two
contemporary and basic serif and sans-serif fonts. My hypothesis is
that the serif font is viewed as more polished or refined, and
therefore the result of more hours of work. But I could be wrong.
This is in-line with the advice here to use serif for long form and
sans for short. When you're making signs and things like that, you
don't have the repeated forms to inform your ability to interpret
letters, so the serifs act to confuse readers, while in long form,
they add flair, which could be more artistic and tasteful.
shagie wrote 1 day ago:
> And Comic Sans for letters sent to friends finishing design
school, obviously.
... and libressl. [1] (and the talk - [2] )
(HTM) [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20140625075722/http://www.libr...
(HTM) [2]: https://youtu.be/GnBbhXBDmwU?si=gMlhb2Xis5V8sR6K&t=2939
r0ckarong wrote 2 days ago:
Good thing the world is entirely stable and the United States have
literally no more pressing issues.
alexandre_m wrote 1 day ago:
Was the world stable in 2023 when the font change occured?
layer8 wrote 1 day ago:
Serifs should improve stability.
zzo38computer wrote 2 days ago:
Calibri font has "I" and "l" the same, according to Wikipedia. A better
font should avoid characters being too similar (such as "I" and "l" and
"1").
Another issue is due to the font size and font metrics, how much space
it will take up on the page, to be small enough to avoid wasting paper
and ink but also not too small to read.
So, there are multiple issues in choosing the fonts; however, Times New
Roman and Calibri are not the only two possible choices.
Maybe the government should make up their own (hopefully public domain)
font, which would be suitable for their purposes (and avoiding needing
proprietary fonts), and use that instead.
adrian_b wrote 22 hours 3 min ago:
You are right, but if legibility had been the reason for change,
Times New Roman is a rather poor choice, even if better than Calibri.
Among Microsoft typefaces, Georgia would have been much better than
Times New Roman, especially when read on displays, but even when
printed.
There are of course even better choices, but Georgia is a familiar
typeface for most people, it is similar enough to Times New Roman and
the older versions of Georgia are free to use by anybody.
Georgia is not as condensed as Times New Roman, but here Times New
Roman is the anomaly, as it is more condensed than a normal font, for
the purpose of fitting within narrow newspaper columns.
From Windows 3.0 to Windows 98, I have used Times New Roman as my
main text font in documents, because Windows did not include anything
better, but immediately after the introduction of the superior
Georgia I replaced Times New Roman with it for some years, until
eventually I stopped relying on the bundled typefaces and I have
bought some typefaces that I liked more, for use in all my documents.
(Windows 3.0 did not have yet TTF fonts, with which the licensed
Times New Roman was introduced later, but it already had a metrically
equivalent Times font).
RobotToaster wrote 23 hours 56 min ago:
I've always found serif fonts easier to read, although I prefer
Baskerville over Times.
ensocode wrote 1 day ago:
ha ha MAGA font. Only big letters
thiht wrote 23 hours 57 min ago:
THE BEST LETTERS
timeon wrote 1 day ago:
See this policy of return to Times New Roman really works. People are
debating particular letters after (both) rulings have been made
instead of the fact that president protects pedophiles.
abeyer wrote 1 day ago:
Only rich ones. Lowbrow pedophiles who hang out in pizza parlors
are a whole different thing.
bulbar wrote 1 day ago:
Nothing is more inefficient than the secretary of state thinking
about and conducting meetings about the font used in documents. It
just doesn't matter in the sense that it "doesn't move the needle".
I expect the leaders of a government deciding on matters that have a
real impact on people's live, not on stuff that from a practical
point of view is totally irrelevant.
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 51 min ago:
It's not about anything practical, it's all about the message.
otikik wrote 1 day ago:
So, two options.
a) It's a smoke screen. Do something bombastic and provocative so
that the opposition chews on that while something else more
"important" passes undetected.
b) Nah, he's just stupid.
hamandcheese wrote 1 day ago:
> not on stuff that from a practical point of view is totally
irrelevant.
The modern era we live in has far, far too much of this attitude.
It's the same force eroding craftsmanship, attention to detail, and
human dignity.
I find it quite reasonable for someone to care about the
presentation of official government communications.
And just so we are clear, I also think Rubio is a horrible person.
nailer wrote 1 day ago:
The global impression of the US is worth thinking about. The font
is part of that.
notahacker wrote 15 hours 42 min ago:
It's an interesting thought, given what current global
impressions are.
I'm imagining a scenario in which the President of the United
States is doing his usual sort of diplomatic outreach, consisting
of waffling incoherently about things he's heard on TV that he
doesn't like about their country. At one point he loses his train
of thought and starts bragging about how well he's doing in
cognitive adequacy tests. The diplomats are waiting until the bit
where they get to flatter and bribe him at the end, the bit where
he usually reverses his foreign policy, so long as they can get
him to understand what they're actually asking from him. One of
them speculates whether it's even possible that half the country
is actually dumber than this guy.
A staffer wearing a MAGA baseball cap sidles up to them with some
briefing notes. And its just impossible not to notice the notes
are typeset in the very same venerable font that was once used as
the default for Windows 9x.
The diplomats are stunned. No sans serif wokeness here. The
typeface exudes heritage and gravitas. At last they realize what
a very serious adminstration they're dealing with.
sorenjan wrote 18 hours 52 min ago:
You want to know what the global impression of the US is right
now? Here's a translated quote from a newspaper today, from a
source in our military:
> â The US has the most qualified intelligence organizations in
the world at its disposal. Both the CIA and the FBI have been
politicized under the current regime. I find it difficult to see
how we will be able to maintain the trusting cooperation we have
had with the US in the past after this.
The actions of the current administration speaks far louder than
any font ever could, and it's tearing down decades of good will
and trust.
nailer wrote 14 hours 44 min ago:
> Both the CIA and the FBI have been politicized under the
current regime.
The CIA and FBI were politicised well before the current
regime. If you live in the US you will be aware of the
Russiagate hoax.
seanhunter wrote 23 hours 0 min ago:
Speaking as someone who is not from the US I can say that the
global impression of the US is not helped by the secretary of
state bikeshedding about fonts. There are important issues of
foreign affairs that need thought and attention at this time.
nailer wrote 14 hours 41 min ago:
I don't think it really took much time.
"Use a better font in all documnts from now on"
There you go.
seanhunter wrote 1 hour 46 min ago:
That's not the point at all and I think you know that.
A big part of leadership is conveying priorities. This says
"What's important isn't Israel, Venezuela, Russia/Ukraine,
China, it's that you used Calibri in compiling a document."
It is the very definition of form over substance.
7bit wrote 1 day ago:
No one cares about the font US documents are written in. You're
not that important.
jimnotgym wrote 1 day ago:
The Global impression of the US is down the toilet. This only
adds to that. I kept being told that I was not American, and
America didn't care what the rest of the world thought. Which is
it?
bulbar wrote 1 day ago:
It's really not. The used font just doesn't move the needle
regarding the global impression. 99% of people never ever think
or care about the font they use.
What else should be decided on on the highest level: spacing,
padding, allowance of the Oxford comma?
It is useful that somebody thinks about that stuff, just not the
highest level of the government.
That's like the CEO of Microsoft having meeting about coding
conventions, space vs tabs, variable name format etc.
nailer wrote 15 hours 19 min ago:
> That's like the CEO of Microsoft having meeting about coding
conventions, space vs tabs, variable name format etc.
Gates absolutely did care when Windows products were bad.
moltopoco wrote 23 hours 58 min ago:
The irony here is that Steve Jobs _did_ actually think about
fonts. Sure, he certainly didn't think about Times New Roman,
but I disagree with the idea that someone at the top should not
have time to write a quick memo about trivialities if it
bothers them.
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 48 min ago:
(Part of) Steve Jobs' job was to deliver a great operating
system, and part of that relates to how fonts are used. No
part of the President's job involves picking a font, let
alone legislating around it, unless there are actual
political factors involved.
nailer wrote 15 hours 3 min ago:
The secretary of state communicates with foreign countries,
and part of that relates to how fonts are used. I am sure
you are already aware of this.
Terr_ wrote 1 day ago:
In general, yes, but for these leaders... the less sabotaging
impact they have, the better.
VerifiedReports wrote 1 day ago:
Yep. Any font that neglects to put crossbars on the capital "i"
should be eliminated from consideration for any practical
application.
moomoo11 wrote 1 day ago:
No. I donât want the gov wasting money making a fucking font.
Thereâs a few dozen off the shelf fonts that would work for 99.99%
of people.
For those who it doesnât work, deal with it. Itâs a font. Or
fallback to system font.
amluto wrote 23 hours 14 min ago:
Neither Calibri nor Times New Roman are free to use, although they
are free in certain contexts for Windows users. The US Government
is paying plenty for them.
echelon wrote 1 day ago:
You know the fonts on our roads are standardized? And a lot of
other official documents?
Designing a font that will be public domain forever costs next to
nothing. It's a one-time cost that pays dividends into the future
and that will probably outlive us.
The government would create something standard and accessible, and
anyone could use it. No encumbered licensing.
I think companies refreshing design systems is a waste of money,
but the government doing it is actually incredibly prudent.
moomoo11 wrote 1 day ago:
I don't think you understand how gov spends money lol.
What you think is "next to nothing" will 99% turn into $300
million dollars and 10 years later about $4 billion will have
been spent.
And 100% there are people waiting to milk the gov doing this.
Maybe you are one of them? In that case...
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 47 min ago:
> will 99% turn into $300 million dollars
Only because of corruption, which should be dealt with of
course, but that's a totally separate issue that doesn't
invalidate the act of making an open font.
rtkwe wrote 1 day ago:
True though the confusion about that is largely when you're not
dealing with words like passwords or hashes. In the context of words
it's going to be generally disambiguated by context, I can't think of
an example off hand in writing where I and l will that ambiguous. The
removal of serifs probably has a higher impact to more people unless
I'm missing some common situation where they'd be easy to confuse in
context.
adrian_b wrote 21 hours 35 min ago:
On the Web I see very frequently foreign names, user handles or
URLs where I am confused about whether there is an I or an l,
because that Web page has chosen to use a bad sans serif font that
does not differentiate these letters.
Sometimes there is no problem because the words or links containing
ambiguous letters can be copied and pasted. Other times there is an
annoying problem because either the stupid designer has disabled
copying (or like in the output of Google and some other search
engines, copying does not copy the visible text, but a link that
cannot be used in a different context, outside the browser), or
because I want to write on my computer a link or name that I have
received on my phone.
zzo38computer wrote 10 hours 28 min ago:
I disabled fonts on the web browser on my computer, in order to
avoid that and other problems. I also disabled the display of
non-ASCII characters in URLs (which required adding some codes to
make it do that; the built-in settings will only work for the
domain name and not the rest of the URL), and changed the font
used for URLs, which also helps.
gerdesj wrote 1 day ago:
A font was the en_US version of fount. A fount was a particular
example of a typeface. A typeface is something like TNR or Calibri.
They all seem to have been munged into a single set of synonyms
except for fount which has been dropped (so why do we still have
colour and all that stuff)?
A print, then typewriter, then computer typeface emulates a written
script but also takes on a life of its own. Handwriting in english
is mostly gibberish these days because hardly anyone uses a pen
anymore! However, it is mostly "cursive" and cursive is not the same
as serif and sans.
English prides itself on not having diacritics, or accents or
whatever that thing where you merge a A and E is called, unless they
are borrowed: in which case all bets are off; or there is an r in the
month and the moon is in Venus.
So you want a font and it needs to look lovely. If your O and 0 are
not differentiated then you have failed. 2:Z?, l:L:1? Good.
I use a german style slash across the number seven when I write the
number, even though my number one is nothing like a german one, which
looks more like a lambda. I also slash a lone capital Zed. I slash a
zero: 0 and dot an O when writing code on paper. Basically, when I
write with a pen you are in absolutely no doubt what character I have
written, unless the DTs kick in 8)
buntsai wrote 22 hours 39 min ago:
The use of the "font" spelling variant rather than "fount" is any
case a clearer indication of etymology.
After all, a "fount" of types refers not to its role as a fountain
of printing (fons fontis L -> fontaine OF -> fountain) but the
pouring out, melting and casting of lead (fundo fundere fudu fusum
[fused!] L -> fondre / fonte F).
DocTomoe wrote 1 day ago:
There's no pride in not having diacritics, it's a sign of an
insufficient script. It's the reason why English writing gives no
hint of pronunciation.
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
> English prides itself on not having diacritics, or accents or
whatever that thing where you merge a A and E is called, unless
they are borrowed
Its called the letter âashâ and its borrowed from... (Old)
English. Though its functionally reverted to being a ligature,
which is what is was before it was a letter.
(Also, English has &, which was a letter even more recentlyâits
current name being taken from the way it was recited as part of the
alphabet [âand, per se, andâ], including the effect of slurring
with speedâand which also originated as a ligature.)
FeteCommuniste wrote 1 day ago:
The linked A+E thing is called a ligature: [1] Same root as
"ligament" and "ligand."
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(writing)
vintermann wrote 1 day ago:
It's a ligature in modern English, but it's a proper letter in
Anglo-Saxon.
Ligatures or contextual letter variants (such as s being written
with a different symbol when it's at the end of a word) are a sin
to encode as characters. They should be part of the presentation
layer, not the content layer! And don't even get me started on
OCR which thinks such things are good to "preserve".
irishcoffee wrote 1 day ago:
I thought I was the only one that still crossed a seven and slashed
a zero. I donât dot an âOâ however.
IggleSniggle wrote 1 day ago:
That's good, because the "O" should never be dotted. You use
slash OR dot for zero, unless you vaguely remember them both as
useful for disambiguating but forgot that both marks are for zero
and vary by typeface. Mostly dotted zero was just during the dot
matrix era. I wouldn't mind being shown counter examples.
FeteCommuniste wrote 1 day ago:
I cross my sevens, slash my zeros, and use a hook on lowercase T
to avoid confusion with plus signs. I think I developed the
hook-T habit in college math classes.
irishcoffee wrote 1 day ago:
I didnât even think about that one, I do that as well, and
for the exact same reason! Thatâs too funny.
Jailbird wrote 1 day ago:
I cross my sevens!
I'll consider starting to slash my zeros. Seems legit.
vintermann wrote 1 day ago:
Ãh, that isn't ideal for Danes, Norwegians or people who
regularly deal with empty sets.
zzo38computer wrote 10 hours 40 min ago:
What I had done sometimes when writing slashed zero by a
pencil and needed the disambiguation (which is not that
common in my writing but it does happen sometimes that it
will be important), is for the slash the other way for zero,
to avoid being confused with slashed O or the symbol for
empty sets. Atkinson Hyperlegible font (mentioned in another
comment) also works that way, too; the slash for zero is the
other way than the slashed O in languages that use that.
davchana wrote 1 day ago:
In india its considered bad omen to slash 7s.
Fnoord wrote 1 day ago:
We are trying to summon a Leviathan here.
jazzyjackson wrote 1 day ago:
> Maybe the government should make up their own
They have, public sans, courtesy of USWDS, and it does distinguish
between l and I with a little hook/spur on lowercase el [1]
(HTM) [1]: https://public-sans.digital.gov/
(HTM) [2]: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Public+Sans?preview.text=1...
wombatpm wrote 1 day ago:
Is USWDS still a thing? I thought they were DOGED out of existence.
ycombigrator wrote 1 day ago:
I think the whole US is being DOGED out of existence tbh.
jazzyjackson wrote 1 day ago:
Good question, with a little searching I found that, in true DOGE
fashion, there exists an executive order announcing a new
"National Design Studio" which is tasked with updating USWDS
So why fonts are being managed by Rubio and not the Chief Design
Officer is anyone's guess
(HTM) [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/08/fact-shee...
sailfast wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah itâs fascist looking as hell, and theyâre the ones
that have been registering all these rando program domains. So,
so dumb - if only because itâs redundant and wasteful. [1]
With such inspiring copy as
âWhat's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump,
you're not wrong. But what's the foundation of that brand? One
that's more globally recognized than practically anything else.
It's the nationâ¦where he was born. It's the United States of
America.â how can you go wrong?
(HTM) [1]: https://ndstudio.gov/
Terr_ wrote 1 day ago:
For anyone sharing my confusion: Yes, that cringetastic text
(and borderline Hatch-Act violation) is up there, but it's a
different linked domain:
(HTM) [1]: https://americabydesign.gov/
sorenjan wrote 18 hours 55 min ago:
> AN OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
> What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump,
you're not wrong.
This is beyond satire by now, it reminds me of Idi Amin and
his official title:
His full self-bestowed title ultimately became: "His
Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji
Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE, Lord of All the
Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of
the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in
Particular"
sailfast wrote 19 hours 35 min ago:
Yes thank you for posting the click-through. Just about
every site they make is hot garbage unfortunately. Itâs
depressing.
The Hatch Act is a law, but is effectively dead under this
administration as it is never enforced and often violated
brazenly.
zimpenfish wrote 22 hours 44 min ago:
I'm no expert but "We've been conditioned to accept that
mediocre in government is normal." reads terribly.
Surely it should be "...that mediocrity in..." or even
"...that mediocre government..." or even "...that being
mediocre in...". All of those are better!
edit: this text is a mess. "It's time to upgrade, and fix
the nation's digital potholes." That comma is nonsense.
NekkoDroid wrote 19 hours 47 min ago:
> edit: this text is a mess. "It's time to upgrade, and
fix the nation's digital potholes." That comma is
nonsense.
I assume they wanted to look smart in the sense "look at
us, we used the oxford comma" without actually
understanding that the oxford comma needs 3 or more
elements listed to be an actual oxford comma.
jrjeksjd8d wrote 1 day ago:
The funniest part of this site is talking about how
important design is, and then having one bad quality video
of a US flag and a bunch of giant text fading into view
while scrolling. It's giving "graphic design is my passion"
layer8 wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs also on GitHub: [1] The glyph repertoire is a bit limited,
though.
(HTM) [1]: https://github.com/uswds/public-sans
vessenes wrote 1 day ago:
Ooh, I like Public Sans! I hadn't seen it before.
ajross wrote 1 day ago:
> Calibri font has "I" and "l" the same, according to Wikipedia. A
better font should avoid characters being too similar (such as "I"
and "l" and "1").
Only when used in a context where they can be confused. This is a
situation where HN is going to give bad advice. Programmers care
deeply about that stuff (i.e. "100l" is a long-valued integer literal
in C and not the number 1001). Most people tend not to, and there is
a long tradition of fonts being a little ambiguous in that space.
But yes, don't use Calibri in your editor.
da_chicken wrote 1 day ago:
Yes, exactly this. Judging a document font based on how well it
functions as a programming font is weird.
VerifiedReports wrote 1 day ago:
"Only when used in a context where they can be confused."
So what are you supposed to when you're typing along and suddenly
you find yourself in such a context? Switch the font of that one
occurrence? That document? Your whole publishing effort?
Capital "i"s without crossbars aren't capital "i"s. They're
lower-case Ls. Any font that doesn't recognize this should be
rejected.
inejge wrote 1 day ago:
> Capital "i"s without crossbars aren't capital "i"s. They're
lower-case Ls. Any font that doesn't recognize this should be
rejected.
You have asserted this at least thrice in the past thirty
minutes. What makes you feel so strongly about it? "Rejected" for
what purpose? Do you understand that you've just trashed
Helvetica, to take a famous example?
VerifiedReports wrote 1 day ago:
What an odd question. I don't like degraded communication or
stupidity. Is that enough justification?
Oh wait, I trashed hallowed Helvetica? The Lord's font? The
font used on the tablets Moses carried down from Mount Sinai?
OMG whatever shall I do.
Meanwhile, the question stands.
tedunangst wrote 1 day ago:
It's not like the State Department would ever mention Kim Jong the
Second in documents.
bitwize wrote 1 day ago:
Nope, just Kim Jong one (in French).
MarkusQ wrote 1 day ago:
> Most people tend not to
Except the whole rationale for going to Calibri in the first place
was that it was supposedly more accessible due to being easier to
OCR.
NewJazz wrote 1 day ago:
That's the "diversity" they were talking about?? Fucks sake.
rtkwe wrote 1 day ago:
It's not, although blind or highly vision impared people who
use screen readers sometimes also have to rely on OCR when the
document isn't properly formatted with text.
Using a sans serif font generally helps anyone with difficulty
distinguishing letters so dyslexic, low vision, aging vision
etc. individuals. It's not just for digital OCR.
MarkusQ wrote 1 day ago:
> Using a sans serif font generally helps anyone with
difficulty distinguishing letters so dyslexic, low vision,
aging vision etc.
So far as I'm aware, there is very little actual evidence to
support this oft-repeated claim. It all seems to lead back
to this study of 46 individuals, the Results section of which
smells of p-hacking.
(HTM) [1]: https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/20...
IshKebab wrote 1 day ago:
> Most people tend not to
Yeah because normal people never have to deal with alphanumeric
strings...
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
> Yeah because normal people never have to deal with alphanumeric
strings...
Natural language tends to have a high degree of disambiguating
redundancy and is used to communicate between humans, who are
good at making use of that. Programming languages have somewhat
less of disambiguating redundancy (or in extreme cases almost
none), and, most critically, are used to communicate with
compilers and interpreters that have zero capacity to make use of
it even when it is present.
This makes "letter looks like a digit that would rarely be used
in a place where both make sense" a lot more of a problem for a
font used with a programming language than a font used for a
natural language.
IshKebab wrote 1 day ago:
> Natural language
I said alphanumeric strings not natural language. Things like
order codes, authentication codes, license numbers, etc.
vintermann wrote 1 day ago:
That yaa can gat ba wath ana waval dasn't maan that wa all
shaald start wratang laka thas.
Y_Y wrote 1 day ago:
Alright, Lumpy Space Princess
Ferret7446 wrote 1 day ago:
People named Al are having a field day with the recent AI boom.
El confusion is absolutely a problem for regular people.
moltopoco wrote 1 day ago:
This indeed. In the last couple of years, I've had to re-read
a whole lot of sentences because I read it as the wrong Al/AI
in my head at first.
morshu9001 wrote 1 day ago:
Legal language isn't very natural
dragonwriter wrote 1 day ago:
Legal language is natural language with particular
domain-specific technical jargon; like other uses of natural
language, it targets humans who are quite capable of
resolving ambiguity via context and not compilers and
interpreters that are utterly incapable of doing so.
Not that official State Department communication is mostly
âlegal languageâ as distinct from more general formal use
of natural language to start with.
pseingatl wrote 18 hours 58 min ago:
The US Supreme Court uses Century or Century Schoolbook.
ajross wrote 1 day ago:
No, because normal people can read "l00l" as a number just fine
and don't actually care if the underlying encoding is different.
AI won't care either. It's just us on-the-spectrum nerds with
our archaic deterministic devices and brains trained on them that
get wound up about it. Designing a font for normal readers is
just fine.
VerifiedReports wrote 1 day ago:
Normal readers know that capital "i" has crossbars on it.
Why design an intentionally ambiguous font? There is only
downside to it.
HPsquared wrote 1 day ago:
Come to think of it, I vs l vs 1 vs | is one advantage of serif
fonts.
pmontra wrote 1 day ago:
Yes and I use the Atkinson font in my emacs (for code) which is
proportional and sans serif except for those characters
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkinson_Hyperlegible
Propelloni wrote 20 hours 49 min ago:
This font can't be promoted enough!
VerifiedReports wrote 1 day ago:
The crossbars on the capital "i" are not serifs.
But sans-serif fonts are certainly the prime offenders of rendering
a lower-case L in place of the capital "i".
adrian_b wrote 21 hours 26 min ago:
The crossbar of a t is not a serif, but those of the capital I
are definitely serifs.
Only on computer screens it is possible to confuse serifs with
crossbars, because of the very low resolution, which forces the
increase of the width of a serif to 1 pixel, possibly making it
as wide as a crossbar.
To convince yourself that capital I has serifs and not crossbars,
just look at high-resolution photos of some Roman imperial
inscriptions, like that on Trajan's column, which are the gold
standard for the design of the capital letters in serif fonts.
Most letters of the Latin script are made of 3 elements, thick
lines, thin lines and serifs. The width ratio between the thick
lines and the thin lines is called the contrast of the font.
Serif fonts normally have a higher contrast and sans serif fonts
not only have no serifs, but they also have no contrast or only a
low contrast.
Serifs are even thinner than the thin lines (which include some
of the crossbars), except in sans serif fonts (which have no
serifs) and slab serifs fonts (where the serifs are as thick as
the thin lines).
Both the sans serif and the slab serif fonts are fonts typical
for the 19th century after the Napoleonian wars, when they were
used mainly for advertising, where they attracted attention due
to their anomalous serifs and they also allowed a lower cost by
using cheap paper and printing machines, which would not have
rendered well the standard serif fonts.
In several programmer fonts, where most characters are sans
serif, a few characters are made slab serif, i.e. with serifs
that are as thick as a crossbar, with the purpose of
distinguishing them clearly from similar characters. Thus capital
I is made with thick serifs looking like crossbars, even if that
is not the standard capital I shape. The reason is less to
distinguish it from l, which should have a low hook even in
sans-serif typefaces, but to distinguish it better from vertical
bar, which is important in programming languages.
Moreover, because such programmer fonts are fixed-pitch, a few
narrow characters have slab serifs that do not exist in
variable-pitch fonts, in order to avoid excessive areas of white
space between letters. Such slab serifs added for blackening are
put at the top of the small i, j and l letters, not only on
capital I (but on the small letters the slab serifs are
unilateral, not bilateral, like on capital I). Such extra slab
serifs on the narrow characters are inherited from the
type-writing machines, where they had the purpose to diminish the
pressure of the hammer hitting the paper, to avoid making holes
in the paper.
VerifiedReports wrote 1 day ago:
Down-modded by an obscurity apologist.
Terretta wrote 2 days ago:
This change sounds like that "waste, fraud, and abuse" stuff.
If you add up all the government memos, forms, letters, contracts,
publications, everything printed globallyâ¦
âwow. many serif. so pointy. much ink. such waste!â â Kabosu,
probably
Hizonner wrote 2 days ago:
I'm mostly surprised it wasn't Fraktur.
How pitiful do you have to be as Secretary of State to get into
minutiae about fonts, anyway?
SpicyLemonZest wrote 1 day ago:
As pitiful as the last guy, apparently? As the article says, the
decision to switch to Calibri in the first place came directly from
Blinken. (I try not to get into anti-anti-Trump discourse, but
getting worked up about fonts seems counterproductive to me.)
watwut wrote 1 day ago:
Except that last guy was not pitiful about and did not had any
ideological hateful proclamations.
It was choice for slightly better readability on screens. Plus that
font was default in word. There were not emotional claims about it.
It is entirely valid to make fun of Rubio.
unethical_ban wrote 1 day ago:
Neither of these decisions likely originated with the SoS
themselves. I say the reasoning matters, though.
You can try to avoid the discourse, but if you're American then
you're in it. This administration is destroying the country for
many reasons: profit, hatred of democracy, racism, control. And
FWIW, it's the current administration foaming at the mouth about a
font change, not the last one.
In this case, the decision is solely because the last guy did
something and they can't let anything from the last administration
stand.
Let's say, in an alternate universe where Rubio's department
genuinely thought there were cost or coordination issues with
Calibri. They could have reversed the decision and cited that. But
no: Making a font that is more compatible with screen reader
technology is woke. Their words, not mine.
tpmoney wrote 1 day ago:
> Let's say, in an alternate universe where Rubio's department
genuinely thought there were cost or coordination issues with
Calibri. They could have reversed the decision and cited that.
So apparently Daring Fireball (of all places) got their hands on
the full memo text[1]. And in all of the text, there are 2
sentences total that refer to DEI at all, the rest of it is
talking about those coordination and cost issues. So I guess they
did do that, they just also had to take their shots at DEI
because why be in politics these days if you can't virtue signal
even the most standard of decisions.
[1]
(HTM) [1]: https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/12/state-department...
SpicyLemonZest wrote 1 day ago:
"Woke" is not, in fact, their words. The source article doesn't
quote Rubio as saying "woke". The NY Times coverage ( [1] ) goes
into a lot more detail than Reuters, as is typical; they don't
publish the full text of the order (IIUC this is common to
protect sources), but they say Rubio cited a number of
coordination and messaging issues, along with a metric of
document accessibility requests which he says did not decrease in
the Calibri era.
Again, I say this not to nitpick or to dispute that it's kinda
silly, but to emphasize that this is a provocation you shouldn't
and don't need to rise to. The State Department's font choices do
not matter, and it will not hurt anyone nor create a bad
permission structure if they use Times New Roman. The only
possible way this story could become even a tiny bit
consequential is if Democrats take the bait and radicalize
against serifs.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/us/politics/rubio-sta...
oneeyedpigeon wrote 22 hours 29 min ago:
They definitely did use the term 'DEI', though, which is pretty
much interchangeable as far as they're concerned.
unethical_ban wrote 1 day ago:
Fair point that they didn't say the word woke. I'll own that
criticism.
I will assert that any justification for this that could be
seen as legitimate is wiped away when they write anything about
"Calibri is DEI" when there were valid reasons to consider it.
And believe me, I am well aware of where this ranks in the list
of sins of the administration. It's a very small, very petty
action in line with their broader ethos.
648373628229 wrote 2 days ago:
What's wrong with Fraktur?
maxnoe wrote 2 days ago:
Fraktur is often associated with the German far right, because it's
a mostly German thing that nationalists can hang on to.
Funnily enough, it was Goebbels who banned it and required everyone
to change to Latin scripts.
tormeh wrote 1 day ago:
Got to hand it to them - Fraktur is an annoying font. It looks
cool, though.
loadingcmd wrote 2 days ago:
As the administration steps back from global affairs, it seems the
State Department is searching for direction.
Rubio would go like - weâre done with managing world affairs via the
NSS, what should we do next? Letâs change the font for a new
perspective!
platevoltage wrote 1 day ago:
Gotta get that typeface looking good before the regime change starts.
hightrix wrote 1 day ago:
> it seems the State Department is searching for direction
I would argue that it seems more like the State Department is
searching for distraction moreso than direction. From the murders,
theft, and the epstien files.
dehugger wrote 1 day ago:
which murders? are we talking about ICE or Venezuela or something
else?
hightrix wrote 12 hours 1 min ago:
Does it matter? There are multiple instances of this admin
murdering people.
seanmcdirmid wrote 1 day ago:
Times New Roman is an old perspective. Itâs all part of Trumpâs
plan to take America back to 1950 and pretend 2050 isnât coming up.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote 1 day ago:
They should bring back mid-Atlantic accents, then there'd be some
silver lining to all this bullshit
actionfromafar wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah, we all thought the fascists at least would be stylish when
they came.
No, itâs all just fake gold and baseball caps.
xdennis wrote 1 day ago:
From the article:
> The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched
to Calibri
jasonlotito wrote 1 day ago:
Times New Roman existed in 1950. Your comment does not in ANY way
contest the parent comment.
WastedCucumber wrote 1 day ago:
I think the comment points to the other possible motivation -
undo everything that was done under the Biden admin out of
principle/spite.
platevoltage wrote 1 day ago:
And tell everyone that it's to get rid of DEI or something,
because thats how much you respect your voters' intelligence.
morshu9001 wrote 1 day ago:
So did sans serif fonts
ChrisArchitect wrote 2 days ago:
[dupe]
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46212438
jgalt212 wrote 2 days ago:
> The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to
Calibri, a modern sans-serif font, saying this was a more accessible
font for people with disabilities
That's interesting because I've long been under the impression that
serif fonts promoted easier reading. As such, serif fonts could /
should be considered more accessible.
softgrow wrote 2 days ago:
As documented at [1] google search for "times new roman font" and the
results are returned in that font. ( [2] for the lazy). Looks terrible
on my screen.
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_Easter_eggs
(HTM) [2]: https://www.google.com/search?q=Times+New+Roman+Font
vintermann wrote 1 day ago:
I think it mostly depends on what we're used to and what our
associations are.
Many computer science people I respect are huge typeface nerds, but
personally I could never see much value in focusing on it.
jacobgkau wrote 1 day ago:
To be honest, the first moment I saw the page, it did seem to give my
eyes a negative reaction, but after reading a few of the results, it
started to look fine pretty quickly.
nine_k wrote 2 days ago:
Nice! Also works with Courier and Comic Sans, but, sadly, not with
Helvetica.
layer8 wrote 1 day ago:
Wingdings would have been nice.
cwnyth wrote 2 days ago:
And Arial, Calibri, Georgia, and Cambria. It's missing Linux
Libertine fonts, though. So typical.
anigbrowl wrote 2 days ago:
While mostly framed as a matter of clarity and formality in
presentation, Mr. Rubioâs directive to all diplomatic posts around
the world blamed âradicalâ diversity, equity, inclusion and
accessibility programs for what he said was a misguided and ineffective
switch from the serif typeface Times New Roman to sans serif Calibri in
official department paperwork.
In an âAction Requestâ memo obtained by The New York Times, Mr.
Rubio said that switching back to the use of Times New Roman would
ârestore decorum and professionalism to the departmentâs written
work.â Calibri is âinformalâ when compared to serif typefaces
like Times New Roman, the order said, and âclashesâ with the
departmentâs official letterhead.
As far back as I can recall, this is a politician who has railed
against 'political correctness'.
mullingitover wrote 1 day ago:
It's incredibly generous to so many future plaintiffs to have this
overt hostility to the very concept of accessibility and fairness and
put in writing, so many times and in so many ways.
Spivak wrote 1 day ago:
Like the choice of typeface is of literally no importance whatsoever
but it is also the funniest thing in the world that there is now a
DEI font.
rtpg wrote 1 day ago:
The thing is that some section of the right has convinced itself
that Calibre is some DEI font. Meanwhile the rest of the world is
just living life and having to deal with people getting this worked
up about the default font of Microsoft Office since what, 2008?
Parallel universes
mitchbob wrote 2 days ago:
> Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Biden-era move to the sans
serif typeface âwasteful,â casting the return to Times New Roman as
part of a push to stamp out diversity efforts.
(HTM) [1]: https://archive.ph/2025.12.10-001235/https://www.nytimes.com/2...
nine_k wrote 2 days ago:
To actually reduce waste, they could have switched to a narrower
typeface, such as Roboto Condensed. At least it would save some paper
occasionally.
gjvc wrote 19 hours 25 min ago:
Roboto Condensed is excellent. It saves space so more words can be
read with each eye movement (saccades) and is very clear.
see also
(HTM) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_in_reading
js2 wrote 2 days ago:
Previously:
Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced
by Calibri
207 points|danso|3 years ago|256 comments
(HTM) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34427504
porridgeraisin wrote 1 day ago:
HN commentors on this font change harp on about how it's a waste of
time (which it of course is), but that font change seemed to receive
a more bland reaction. Funny.
causal wrote 1 day ago:
Well yeah? It's not about the font, it's about the pettiness of the
declared reasons for the reversal
treetalker wrote 2 days ago:
Butterick on TNR:
( [1] )
> When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement,
it connotes apathy. It says, âI submitted to the font of least
resistance.â Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the
absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a
color. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void.
> If you have a choice about using Times New Roman, please stop. Use
something else.
And on Calibri:
( [2] )
> Like Cambria, Calibri works well on screen. But in print, its rounded
corners make body text look soft. If you need a clean sans serif font,
you have better options.
- - -
To telegraph an identity, TNR is a good choice for this administration;
so, credit where due, well played. Still, I would have gone with Comic
Sans.
(HTM) [1]: https://practicaltypography.com/times-new-roman-alternatives.h...
(HTM) [2]: https://practicaltypography.com/calibri-alternatives.html
rasse wrote 1 day ago:
In the context of documents, the lack of font choice regarding Times
New Roman could be partly attributed to the fact that it was the
default font on Microsoft Word until 2007. The irony is, of course,
that it was replaced by none other than Calibri.
MengerSponge wrote 1 day ago:
> I would have gone with Comic Sans
Funny, I would have gone with Tannenberg
cafard wrote 1 day ago:
For about ten years I worked for composition shops, and eventually
for a maker of typesetting systems. Through blurred eyes I could tell
TNR from Baskerville from Garamond from Janson from ... Some of these
fonts I can still identify.
But I have no idea what font was used in the book I just finished
reading or the book that I'm returning to later today. My main
question about a font is whether I can read it with old eyes.
I do agree that designers should care about these matters. I'll add
that for some portion of the reading public TNR more likely means The
New Republic than Times New Roman.
[Five minutes later: the book just finished, What We Can Know by Ian
McEwan, appears to be set in Palatino, never a favorite of mine. The
one I'm returning to, I'm not sure.]
bsder wrote 1 day ago:
My old eyes really wish more people used something like New Century
Schoolbook.
Sunspark wrote 19 hours 23 min ago:
They still do. It's the required font for all US Supreme Court
legal work.
bjoli wrote 2 days ago:
People like this makes me want to use Times New Roman more. Maybe not
Butterick specifically (the website is fine), but all those people
that make a blog and pick a font before even knowing what they even
want to write. Most of the time people change the default my web
browser has, they make things worse. For a font choice to be any kind
of personal expression in my eyes, you first need everything else in
place: content, layout, design.
To spite these people I force the use of Arial on the worst
offenders. The list is now a couple of thousand websites long.
chrismorgan wrote 1 day ago:
> Most of the time people change the default my web browser has,
they make things worse.
In Firefox: Settings â Fonts â Advanced⦠â untick Allow
pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above.
Iâve been running this way for almost six years now; it makes the
web so much better.
morshu9001 wrote 1 day ago:
When there's an HN link to some philosophy website that
intentionally only uses lower-case letters, an obscure font, and
yellow on green color scheme, with a page explaining those choices
comradesmith wrote 1 day ago:
You canât separate layout and design from typeface selection.
But yes I agree content must come first. Typeface probably comes
second!
eviks wrote 2 days ago:
But you're not spiting anyone, they don't even know about this,
just wasting your time compiling a list of a thousand websites
bjoli wrote 2 days ago:
Oh, I could have picked a other font. I just get a smug feeling
when forcing these websites to use Arial. The main reason for
using another font on these web pages is that their own choices
are worse than not changing it. So that list of thousands of web
pages is to make their web pages legible and more usable, not
just to be a prick.
I picked Arial so that I could tell the web pages apart from
those who had the good taste to leave my web browsers standard
font alone. I don't mind arial.
jrochkind1 wrote 1 day ago:
Perhaps your smug feeling can cancel out the smug feeling the
author/publisher had when picking a font before even knowing
what they even want to write.
It's important to keep the smugness balanced, thanks for doing
your part.
BobbyTables2 wrote 2 days ago:
I definitely was thinking of Comic Sans. Both in terms of the
horrible typeface and the ânot funnyâ connotation of the name.
(Yeah I know sans is referring to lack of serif)
Incipient wrote 2 days ago:
>Still, I would have gone with Comic Sans.
I don't often genuinely laugh out loud at comments on HN, but that
one was good! Subtle, classy, and a gentle yet effective dig.
deafpolygon wrote 2 days ago:
Honestly, I like Comic Sans.
Itâs clear, legible and whimsical.
nalnq wrote 2 days ago:
The Times New Roman commentary could have been true back when it was
written, but now Calibri is the default for Microsoft Word, and has
been for a long while (almost 20 years). So choosing Calibri is the
path of least resistance.
rob74 wrote 2 days ago:
So now Times New Roman not only looks uninspired and bland, but
also dated? Yeah, I would say that's a good fit...
Zafira wrote 2 days ago:
Aptos has been the default font for Microsoft Word since 2023.
pests wrote 2 days ago:
With all the fanfare made over Calibri back when it was
announced, TIL about Aptos
0cf8612b2e1e wrote 1 day ago:
I enjoyed the argument that this is going to open up a new time
point for digital forensics. Many people have doctored
documents pretending to have made them in the past. Except they
did not realize that the vintage software used font X, but the
modern default is now Y. There have been a few court cases
where essentially someone is able to say, âThis font is
clearly Calibri which did not exist at the time this document
was supposedly printed.â
If you are a Deep Space 9 fan, this is where you get to scream,
âItâs a fake!!!â
anonymars wrote 1 day ago:
Example:
(HTM) [1]: https://valawyersweekly.com/2023/04/03/font-choice-e...
pests wrote 1 day ago:
The more famous example being the Pakistani Prime Minister
forging documents in Calibri dated before its release.
(HTM) [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-40571708
elzbardico wrote 2 days ago:
I like serif fonts, but never liked Times New Roman too much. Printed,
in high resolution, it is kind of ok, but I absolutely abhor it on
displays. Which is where we read things 99% of the time nowadays.
carlosjobim wrote 1 day ago:
Georgia, Palantino, Bookerly. Those are high quality serif fonts
which suits every occasion.
idatum wrote 2 days ago:
I love how people are passionate about fonts. Search for the 2017
Saturday Night Live skit with Ryan Gosling "Papyrus". It captures the
obsession!
"Itâs like they spent $300 million on the movie, and then.. They just
used Papyrus."
tyre wrote 1 day ago:
My friends and I still reference "Shakira merch" from that sketch
fhdkweig wrote 1 day ago:
[1] from 2017 [2] from 2024
(HTM) [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ
(HTM) [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8PdffUfoF0
chrisweekly wrote 1 day ago:
yes! the first one^1 is hilarious! the sequel^2 is somehow equally
funny.
1. [1] 2.
(HTM) [1]: https://youtu.be/jVhlJNJopOQ?si=jq6NsPhnzwCKXFPr
(HTM) [2]: https://youtu.be/Q8PdffUfoF0?si=sx8XC0X6oJqJIXmc
seba_dos1 wrote 2 days ago:
Sadly, in this particular case, it's not the font that they are
obsessed about.
jaredklewis wrote 2 days ago:
âSometimes I get emotional over fonts.â
- Kanye West
SanjayMehta wrote 2 days ago:
His boss' posts on Truth Social should be in Comic Sans.
Gualdrapo wrote 2 days ago:
Just remember that when the CERN announced they finally could prove
the existence of the Higgs boson, they did it using Comic Sans
(HTM) [1]: https://blog.scottlogic.com/2012/07/05/the-higgs-boson-comic...
elashri wrote 2 days ago:
To be honest, in the official papers they did not use it for either
CMS or ATLAS.
SanjayMehta wrote 2 days ago:
If Trump finds out he'll start "truthing" in Comic Sans and
expecting a Nobel Prize in Physics.
ranger_danger wrote 2 days ago:
[1] Secretary Antony Blinken on NPR's Wait Wait...Donât Tell Me!
About the U.S. Department of State moving from Times New Roman to
Calibri.
(HTM) [1]: https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-on-nprs...
whoisthemachine wrote 2 days ago:
Compare this:
> calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri
a "wasteful" diversity move
to
> SECRETARY BLINKEN: First, Iâm called to make very weighty
decisions (inaudible).
> QUESTION: Oh. Type joke.
> SECRETARY BLINKEN: And Iâm always trying to be a font of wisdom,
(inaudible).
Just... ugh. People voted for all of this non-stop vitriol? I'd like
to have a post that added something meaningful but all I have to add
is frustration with humanity.
techblueberry wrote 2 days ago:
What was wasted?
ggm wrote 2 days ago:
But you [sometimes] still have to use courier filing in the courts?
dragonwriter wrote 2 days ago:
The Supreme Court requires Century (which for any use other than
maybe a newspaper is infinitely better than Times New Romanâand for
a newspaper, Times is better than TNR.)
CaliforniaKarl wrote 2 days ago:
You follow the style guide or rules for the court in which you are
filing. The US Supreme Court, for example, does not use Courier.
IAmBroom wrote 1 day ago:
Pretty soon they'll only accept crayon.
chuckadams wrote 2 days ago:
Apparently sans-serif is "woke" or something. Cleek's Law meets Poe's.
bigtones wrote 2 days ago:
I had to check this was actually Reuters and not The Onion. eye roll
soupfordummies wrote 2 days ago:
"[Rubio] ...calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt
Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move..."
Bro what. It was the default font in Microsoft for many years thus, it
was the default font for most office software for many years -- just
like Times New Roman was before.
What.
QuercusMax wrote 2 days ago:
The article says it's better than Times New Roman because it's easier
to read for those with disabilities - so of course the government
needs to make things worse for them. Wonder if someone could sue over
these kinds of changes that are being deliberately made to be less
accessible.
xtiansimon wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah. I have a dis-a-bility. Itâs now 2200 and Iâve been
working since 0830. My eyes are tired and these 8âs look like
0âs, 5âs look like 6âs. What a tool.
Now! Everything in Fraktur! HH.
wvbdmp wrote 2 days ago:
Is that even true? The article is really vague on the type of
disability and basically just claims that serifs are harder to
read.
Generally sans-serif is advisable for small sizes, although I
assume the main things are large open counters, tall x-height and
low stroke contrast.
Iâve often read that dyslexics favor strongly distinctive
characters and âgroundedâ, bottom-heavy letterforms. I feel
like serifs actually sound pretty good there.
Itâs also important to consider whether such studies were
conducted before or after high-PPI displays became prevalent and
leveled the playing field for serifs.
benterix wrote 2 days ago:
The wiki explicitly mension the typical sans disadvantage: "One
potential source of confusion in Calibri is a visible homoglyph,
a pair of easily confused characters: the lowercase letter L and
the uppercase letter i (l and I) of the Latin script are
effectively indistinguishable."
So while I prefer Calibri as TNR has been the default for longer
and hence is more boring to me, I can understand people might
prefer a serif font for readability.
slater wrote 2 days ago:
Stopped clock, twice right?
rsynnott wrote 2 days ago:
This is Michael Scott levels of managerial nonsense, bloody hell.
Is Trump incapable of hiring anyone borderline competent?
QuercusMax wrote 2 days ago:
The only thing these morons understand are surface level appearances.
That's why we have so many TV people.
- Trump: The Apprentice
- Defense: Hegseth: Fox News
- Transportation: Sean Duffy: Real World / Road Rules
- Education: Linda McMahon: WWE (yes, wrestling)
... I don't feel like going any further, it's too depressing.
Edit: I just realized that Duffy is SecTrans because he was on Road
Rules.
jazzyjackson wrote 1 day ago:
I don't know that being a contestant in a couple of reality tv
shows in college makes Sean Duffy a TV person
McMahon on the other hand was founder and president of WWE
manoDev wrote 1 day ago:
The "Idiocracy" movie is now a documentary from the future.
butvacuum wrote 2 days ago:
Dear Lord... I'd not picked up on this- if true (I need to validate
it for myself).
QuercusMax wrote 2 days ago:
I forgot Dr. Oz, who is in charge of Health and Human Services.
Lots of articles about this; here's a random one:
(HTM) [1]: https://deadline.com/gallery/fox-news-personalities-trum...
jazzyjackson wrote 1 day ago:
Secretary of HHS is RFk Jr, oz is in charge of Medicare and
Medicaid
QuercusMax wrote 16 hours 12 min ago:
Whoops, you're right. Too many clowns in this circus.
abhinavk wrote 1 day ago:
I'm sorry but the vaccine-skeptic RFKjr is US Health
Secretary?
jazzyjackson wrote 1 day ago:
Welcome to 2025
manoDev wrote 2 days ago:
Hilarious. It could be a Mike Judge script.
ranger_danger wrote 2 days ago:
"Do I look like I know what a jay-peg is?"
(DIR) <- back to front page