[HN Gopher] Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts
___________________________________________________________________
Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts
Author : firexcy
Score : 195 points
Date : 2025-12-30 12:56 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hsu.cy)
(TXT) w3m dump (hsu.cy)
| imnotlost wrote:
| The correct typeface for the current U.S. administration would of
| course be Comic Sans or perhaps Comic Serif for double-super-
| serious documents.
| Suzuran wrote:
| Fraktur.
| andybak wrote:
| :-/
| tempodox wrote:
| Fraktur would be apt as the oldest existing typeface. This
| administration and its supporters are so backward, it makes
| the 1600s look like mega-liberal ultra-modern science
| fiction. I'm just waiting for an executive order
| reintroducing cuneiform.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > Martin Bormann issued a circular (the "normal type decree")
| to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its
| corollary, the Sutterlin-based handwriting) to be
| Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further
| use.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur
|
| I don't know if you meant to invoke pro/anti-Nazi
| associations with this typeface but it's unfortunate that
| such a fantastic lettering style carries around a poisonous
| historical connotation.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Why is that poisonous? It sounds like Fraktur was rejected
| by Nazi Germany which isn't a bad thing at all.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Do you know anything about the Nazis, other than that
| they are bad?
|
| They used Fraktur extensively before 1941 and it's
| closely associated with Nazi imagery. This is all
| explained in that link I posted.
|
| I prefer to think of Lie groups, but it's rife in the
| Nazi propaganda of the 30s, official documents etc.
| Suzuran wrote:
| I am aware (of the Judenlettern decree). The reference to
| exactly this was intentional.
|
| (Edit to make this _really_ obvious: The joke here is that
| "fraktur = nazis" became such a meme that the nazis
| themselves were annoyed by it and forbade its use, but this
| is exactly the kind of thing the present administration
| would either be unaware of or simply ignore and then use
| fraktur intentionally to pander to neo-nazis.)
| Y_Y wrote:
| Thanks for spelling it out. I had a feeling that's the
| point you were making, but that level of subtlety has a
| hard time getting through, even on highbrow hn. Hence I
| like to err on the side of spelling things out,
| especially since I'm much more often a reader than a
| writer.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| No, Comic sans is too woke.
|
| In seriousness: Comic Sans seems to be a good font for dyslexic
| people and helps them read.
|
| https://dyslexichelp.org/why-is-comic-sans-good-for-dyslexia...
| sho_hn wrote:
| Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Dropping Calibri was
| done precisely because it was associated with a reason like
| this, so you're entirely right.
| mlfreeman wrote:
| And Wingdings for classified material!
| s20n wrote:
| Of course, just as the highlight tool is used for redaction,
| wingdings is used for encryption!
| silon42 wrote:
| Not Cyrillic?
| robocat wrote:
| > Comic Serif
|
| https://www.hvdfonts.com/fonts/hvd-comic-serif
| rchowe wrote:
| Using either Calibri or Times New Roman makes it look like you
| did not put any thought into your brand and chose the default in
| Microsoft Word. The State department probably has certain
| constraints (i.e. they likely have to choose one of the fonts
| that ships with Microsoft Word, and possibly a subset of that
| that also ships on macOS), but they could definitely choose
| better than the default.
|
| I find the narrow serif typefaces such as Century Schoolbook a
| bit harder to read than ones with more normal spacing, and I
| think the US government should optimize for legibility and
| accessibility over style in routine communications. Palatino or
| Garamond would probably be my choices.
| xattt wrote:
| It's the US government, and it could easily develop their own
| Liberty- or Freedom-type if the current administration wanted
| to leave their own mark.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| https://public-sans.digital.gov/
| beej71 wrote:
| That actually doesn't look horrible to my untrained eye.
| But the web page mentions accessibility, so I'm a little
| bit surprised it still exists.
| poly2it wrote:
| Administered during none other than the first term of
| Trump, as mentioned in the article!
| mrweasel wrote:
| That just makes it incredibly silly. A good argument from
| the current administration would have been to pick Public
| Sans and argue: We paid good money to have a good,
| generic, license free font developed for the government,
| and the previous administration went with a font that
| will cost us money in terms of licensing (not sure how
| true that might be, but it's potentially true, if used
| outside Microsoft Word).
|
| But the current Trump administration has a fun way of
| forgetting everything done during his first presidency.
| Even the smart choices.
|
| I can't imagine how much all this rebranding is costing
| the US taxpayers.
| mjmsmith wrote:
| Trump Grotesque.
| treetalker wrote:
| But we repeat ourselves.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| All letters have a shiny 3D gold effect you can't turn off.
| Perceval wrote:
| Trump does use Akzidenz Grotesk Bold Extended as one of his
| main campaign fonts
| tmoertel wrote:
| You joke, but...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Mediaeval
|
| (Note that this font predates Donald Trump's rise.)
| jamesliudotcc wrote:
| The worst is Times New Roman text with Calibri page numbers. A
| sure sign somebody never learned how to use Microsoft Word.
| sgarland wrote:
| Does Word not default to switching all typefaces - header,
| footer, etc.? If so, IMO that's a bad design that violates
| the principle of least surprise.
| clan wrote:
| Word works very well without surprises if you have learned
| how to use templating and proper headers - the semantics.
| Big if!
|
| I will claim most people still just do selections and
| change font/weight.
|
| So what is good design? Something which enforces our geeky
| ideas of a base font? Or something which let people easily
| do what they want to do and get work done? Who should get
| the least amount of surprise?
|
| Design is taste. Taste leads to principles. Principles
| makes things easy. Design is also compromise. Compromise is
| hard. Design is hard.
| necovek wrote:
| While it is possible to use "semantic" styling and page
| layouts and templates in Word, I would argue that Word owes
| its popularity to the fact that no user is surprised when
| they select text, change the font, it does not change it
| anywhere else.
|
| It is one of the tools that popularised "WYSIWYG" as an
| approach, and as we know from many other tools, you lose
| something when you adopt a tool like that.
|
| Now, I'd always recommend and use a TeX-based document
| layout system (but despite my huge respect for DEK, not
| Computer Modern family of fonts, even for mathematics), but
| many struggle with non-visual document entry: it is no
| surprise scientific community is the only one which
| standardized on it since inputting mathematics visually is
| a PITA.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I love Garamond as a style but it wouldn't be my choice for
| legibility. Most renditions of Garamond have too little
| x-height.
| magnio wrote:
| Shouldn't public documents by the government use a free and libre
| font? In fact, the mentioned Public Sans developed by the US
| federal government seems to be a great option, as it actually
| distinguishes the lowercase l and the uppercase I, something
| that, ironically, all suggested sans-serif alternatives fail to
| do.
| gumby271 wrote:
| You would hope, but changing this font isn't about making
| anything better, it's that Calibre was apparently a DEI font
| and had to go. I can't imagine these people thinking highly of
| an open source (Oooh communism) font that's also designed with
| accessibility in mind.
| b40d-48b2-979e wrote:
| Are we still doing the communism thing? I thought the
| bogeyman is _socialism_ now.
|
| In any case, it would be nice to have some consistency across
| the government, and if they want to make a change, at least
| take prior works into account like what the Congress or
| SCOTUS are doing in their official texts.
| toast0 wrote:
| Times New Roman is available at no cost under the Microsoft
| Core Fonts for the Web. (Microsoft no longer distributes this,
| but the license allows redistribution and redistribution is
| popular). AFAIK, Apple explicitly licenses the fonts and most
| open source OS distributions have a package for these fonts.
|
| It's not libre, but font copyright is weird anyway, and the
| federal government doesn't always need to follow copyright.
| spatley wrote:
| Further, Public Sans was developed by the US govt under the
| first Trump administration and appears to be an excellent font.
| That seems to be a wise choice against TNR or Calibri on
| multiple angles.
| symbogra wrote:
| Wow, the sample shows that 15 point Calibri on official
| government documents was truly awful. In software when we make a
| mistake that causes some production issue the best first action
| is almost always to roll back. Maybe 14 pt TNR isn't the best,
| but rolling back to it is a defensible decision.
| necovek wrote:
| That's a pretty good summary of the entire article :)
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| At some point in the past I read that serif fonts are better for
| readability, as the supports at the base of the letters form a
| line and help the eye stay "on track". This is never mentioned in
| TFA, so I assume it's an urban legend? Personally I much prefer
| serif fonts when reading longer texts.
| phantom784 wrote:
| I was once taught that serif fonts are better in print, and
| sans-serif is better on a screen.
| skywhopper wrote:
| This was definitely true in the days before hi-res screens
| and good anti-aliasing, simply because the serifs get lost or
| become noise in lower-resolution settings. It's probably less
| true today.
|
| Of course, in terms of accessibility, there are any number of
| reasons why someone might prefer to read content in any
| number of typefaces. Certain typefaces are better for folks
| with dyslexia. Others may be better for certain folks with
| ADHD. People with low vision may just prefer a larger
| typeface.
|
| We have these amazing machines we've invented that can
| display the same text in any number of different ways. At
| this point, it seems ridiculous to need to mandate a specific
| typeface for electronic usage. Sure, pick a well-regarded
| default, but if we want to mandate something, it should be
| that software provides tools to allow users to adjust textual
| elements of documents they are reading to suit their own
| needs.
| wonger_ wrote:
| Thanks for that. I thought the same as phantom784 and never
| updated my opinion for hi-res screens.
|
| Related to choosing defaults: I like these tips for
| evaluating the legibility of a body typeface:
| https://prowebtype.com/selecting-body-text/ They mention
| one serif advantage, that "most serif typefaces are often
| ideal choices for reading text due to the noticeable
| strokes in their ascenders and descenders."
| kccqzy wrote:
| Yeah right. Times New Roman rendered using late 1990s
| software on monitors of that era certainly looked awful.
| These days text on screens can reasonably look like print.
| necovek wrote:
| As indicated in the article, serifs come from _how_ original
| letters were carved into stones: they were an artifact of the
| tool in use.
|
| Calligraphy developed similar traits by virtue of using a tool
| that produced an oval shape, and that you had to take care not
| to leave marks when pen/feather leaves the paper.
|
| With the printing press, when we became able to put many books
| out, we did start also doing some research about what makes a
| book easy to read. Not least of because we could now easily put
| many characters on a single line and print it in the thousands.
|
| Serif or cursive fonts were the default "content" type, and
| sans-serif was reserved for titles, shop names and other "short
| texts" as a more "modern", cleaner look: serifs do indeed allow
| one to more easily track a single long line of text, as you can
| more clearly see the "baseline" and not accidentally skip into
| the line above or below.
|
| The next challenge is switching to the next line once you are
| done with the one you are on: while serifs help there too, the
| more important thing is the line length. Thus the famous (is
| it? :) 60-70 word limit for a line, and why you also see many
| web pages that only take like 20% of our modern 32"+ screens
| when browsers are made full screen.
|
| Now, columnar layout as popularized by newspapers does not
| really come from the same desire: like TMR, it actually comes
| from the desire to fit more on one page to save on costs. With
| a wider column of text, all the last lines of paragraphs would
| average out at being half-empty, which is quite a bit with a
| wide column.
|
| Sure, low resolution screens made sans-serif inevitable even
| for documents, but compare that with the earliest segmented LCD
| screens: font was what you could get rendered with as little
| electronics as possible :)
|
| But today, serif fonts on high resolution screens (though there
| are still 32" Full HD screens which are not really high-
| resolution), or with the use of subpixel rendering
| (antialiasing is no match, as you can see by connecting a
| modern Mac to a non-high res screen) are a great choice if you
| want to limit the space you use and maintain great readability.
|
| However, sans-serif fonts can work as well, and you may only
| need to go with a larger line spacing or shorter lines. The
| trick is to aim for a number of words/letters, and not
| "pixels", though modern CSS treats them as a scalable unit.
|
| (Sorry for all of this being a bit rambly, just wanted to share
| a bit of the history along with how we can best apply it today)
| swed420 wrote:
| "Healthcare pls"
|
| edit for the silent downvoters:
|
| The article was good for the topic at hand. My comment applies to
| the existence of the debate itself in the context of a failing
| first world country. For those unfamiliar, the meme is critical
| of both controlled opposition "sides" of our uniparty of capital
| interests.
| gordonhart wrote:
| A few HN commenting guidelines might apply here:
|
| > Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet
| tropes.
|
| > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological
| battle. It tramples curiosity.
|
| > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never
| does any good, and it makes boring reading.
| swed420 wrote:
| > Eschew flamebait.
|
| Arguably the OP borders on flamebait if that's the standard.
|
| > Avoid generic tangents.
|
| OP encapsulates an example of my comment, and is not a
| generic tangent.
|
| > Omit internet tropes.
|
| meme != trope
|
| > Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological
| battle. It tramples curiosity.
|
| Like the first point, all or nothing.
|
| > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never
| does any good, and it makes boring reading.
|
| Point taken.
| umanwizard wrote:
| HN isn't really for memes and quippy references. That's the
| main reason you got downvoted, regardless of whether your
| substantive political point is a good one or not. The original
| comment matches the vibe of Reddit or Twitter a lot better than
| HN.
| swed420 wrote:
| In that case, we'd better stop saying "Stallman was right"
| umanwizard wrote:
| Yes, we should, that would be great.
| swed420 wrote:
| I bet the temporarily embarrassed
| millionaires/billionaires subset of HN would agree.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Well, the correct traditional font for State should really be
| Courier, because "Real America" used typewriters for all
| correspondence.
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| I was sort of thinking that these 'cables' ought really to be
| rendered in a teletypewriter font[1], but then having lower
| case would be anachronistic.
|
| My teacher training (quite a few decades ago) suggested that
| for people with dyslexia you should set large quantities of
| text;
|
| # right ragged so inter-word spacing constant;
|
| # without hyphenation;
|
| # with line spacing larger than word spacing;
|
| # and broken up into sections with headings that describe the
| content of the section.
|
| (As it happens I rarely need to use large chunks of text in
| basic maths teaching)
|
| [1] https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/04... Kennan's notorious cable from 1946
| _looks_ as if it would have severe consequences to me.
| willturman wrote:
| Documents in handwritten Jeffersonian calligraphy as a service.
| tolerance wrote:
| This was a terrific, reasonable take on this "controversy". I
| have to admit that the correspondence set in Calibri looks like
| something dispatched from a leasing office. Imagine reading the
| Warren Commission report set in that. The author seems to settle
| on the consensus that surrounded TNR before this exchange made
| the news. It's banal. At times it signals to its original
| objectives (e.g., Prof. Dr. style websites [1]). But still banal
| more often than not.
|
| I love Univers. But I don't think there's anyone in public office
| with enough influence and swagger to ever enforce it. At the same
| time I have a bad feeling about the attention that decisions like
| this draw and what it may lead to. The article does a great job
| at portraying the general incompetence in both parties.
|
| I can imagine Beto O'Rourke somewhere dreaming about styling all
| government communiques like a page out of _Ray Gun_. Planning his
| come back. To set anything issued from Ted Cruz's office in Zapf
| Dingbats. War.
|
| [1]: https://contemporary-home-computing.org/prof-dr-style/
| wavefunction wrote:
| I suppose the administration's typo-ridden nonsense formatted
| with a serif-font MIGHT appear more professional. It's
| certainly possible, not impossible.
| tolerance wrote:
| Right. Now imagine something like this:
|
| > In response, based upon the cumulative effects of these
| hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United
| States and friendly foreign nations, the President recognized
| that the United States is in a non-international armed
| conflict with these designated terrorist organizations. The
| President directed the Department of War to conduct
| operations against them pursuant to the law of armed
| conflict. The United States has now reached a critical point
| where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others
| against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist
| organizations.
|
| <https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/SAP-
| SJ...>
|
| In "Carlito"!
|
| <https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Carlito>
| jamesliudotcc wrote:
| The Warren Commission report was set in Century Schoolbook, the
| Supreme Court's typeface of choice. The appendices are photo
| reproductions of originals produced on typewriters, so they are
| in something monospaced.
|
| You can see for yourself. They certainly would not have used
| Times New Roman.
|
| But I suppose interoffice memoranda are meant to be skimmed,
| not read, so TNR or Calibri are both fine.
| tolerance wrote:
| I didn't mean to suggest that they would've. I just named a
| government document with significant gravity behind it to
| affect a point similar to the author's:
|
| > There's nothing inherently wrong with this style, but one
| would hardly want an official document or legal contract to
| appear "warm and soft."
|
| Consider the response I gave to the other child comment on
| this thread referring to a different document as a revision
| if that suits you. [1]
|
| I'm sorry. I don't know of nor do I have the wherewithal to
| find any correspondence from the State Department to bolster
| my argument that "humanist fonts" are not always suited to
| the tenor of all government correspondence. Oddly, none of
| the press releases on state.gov are available in PDF as far
| as I can tell.
|
| Wait.
|
| At least imagine _this_!
|
| > The State Department is taking decisive action against five
| individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American
| platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American
| viewpoints they oppose. These radical activists and
| weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by
| foreign states--in each case targeting American speakers and
| American companies. As such, I have determined that their
| entry, presence, or activities in the United States have
| potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for
| the United States.
|
| <https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-
| spokesperson/20...>
|
| In "Carlito"!
|
| It's already in "Open Sans", which looks thinner and may have
| a taller X-height. What do you think of it? Not quite "warm";
| certainly "soft", I think. Should I feel concerned about this
| news? Or just alright?
|
| Anodyne. That's the way the words start to look after some
| time when set like this. How far away is that feeling from
| "banal"?
|
| [1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2025/03/SAP-SJ...
| moron4hire wrote:
| I'm sorry, you can't argue the font choice signals banality in
| the same article in which you argue that readers aren't
| sophisticated enough on font choice to catch that serifs are
| supposed to signal professionalism.
| xiphmont wrote:
| He can, he did, and we're all here arguing about it, which
| somehow delights me.
| tolerance wrote:
| Why not? One quality is inherent, the other inherited. The
| typeface was developed with banality in mind and presumably
| become popular because of its utility in this respect. The
| ensuing popularity in word processors and on the Web likely
| lead to the idea that it's more professional than others.
|
| Again, the author:
|
| > Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman's long
| reign isn't aesthetic excellence, but practicality and
| inertia.
| f30e3dfed1c9 wrote:
| "The typeface was developed with banality in mind..."
|
| That's completely wrong. Times New Roman was designed for
| legibility at small sizes, in narrow columns, on absorbent
| newsprint, printed at high speed. That is, it was designed
| explicitly for a very specific purpose, which it fills
| admirably.
|
| None of that should be taken as any kind of comment on the
| current brouhaha.
| tolerance wrote:
| I hate for us to have to make it clear that any claim in
| favor of the typeface's suitability should not be
| interpreted as direct support for those responsible for
| re-instituting it. This isn't an admonishment, but a
| lament I hope you may share.
|
| While TNR wasn't designed to evoke banality in its less
| desirable connotations I do think the way that you're
| describing it match sensibilities that the word "banal"
| can also carry; Ordinary, commonplace. I admit--it's a
| stretch I'm taking. But how far from banal is the
| utilitarian?
| moron4hire wrote:
| Because font choice outside of large strokes like fantasy
| fonts is meaningless.
|
| All of this exposition only works if people are literate in
| typography enough to get it. Most people can't even
| understand literalist art, say nothing about the symbolism
| of typography.
|
| It's like how the Victorians invented a whole meaning
| categorization to different species of flowers and then
| acted like it was universal law. It's a secret in-crowd
| code. It has no inherent meaning.
| tolerance wrote:
| Could you clarify what you mean by "meaningless"?
|
| How you can conceive a literate society that is not
| affected by type. The fact that general literacy is
| apparently declining is beside the point but we remain
| surrounded by letters and words, the shape of which
| determine how we comprehend what they point out. Planes,
| signs, screens depend on font choice to be effective.
| Newspapers and memoranda too.
|
| The degrees may vary but the significance of a font
| choice just can't be as simple as you make it seem. Just
| only to the extent of the value the public ascribes to
| the type-bearing object. Granted, we may be assigning
| _too much_ to US State Department documents. But who's to
| say?
| WillAdams wrote:
| I love Univers as well, but the _Q_ is just _too_ weird by most
| folks perceptions.
| xiphmont wrote:
| Q, more than any other glyph, is the letter that never fails
| to look weird in every typeface when I spend too much time
| looking at it/re-re-re-re-designing it.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Not sure why Beto is catching strays, but I can tell you're
| from Texas, heh.
| dheera wrote:
| > correspondence set in Calibri looks like something dispatched
| from a leasing office
|
| In general this is the way I feel about _anything_ written in a
| Microsoft-, Apple-, or Ubuntu-supplied typeface. If you stick
| to system fonts you the pinnacle of embodiment of apathy in my
| book.
|
| Have some backbone, browse through Google fonts, pick something
| that represents your organization and stick with it.
|
| Even if you are a leasing office, pick a good font. That will
| make me more likely to lease from you because your attention to
| typography conveys to me that you will also be attentive to
| details in building maintainence. If you communicate in Times
| New Roman and Arial it tells me that you probably are apathetic
| about mold in the walls and electrical code as well.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| That's... certainly an opinion.
| necovek wrote:
| While I appreciate nice typography like not many do (I decide
| on what editions of a book -- especially classics -- to get
| based on the typography and overall layout), I also
| appreciate that I may be easily swayed by good typography and
| land on a crappy outcome (I have several very lousy books
| that were done really well typographically :)).
|
| So I'd never use that as a metric: yes, _I_ care about
| typography, and if the content of the message is equivalent,
| I 'll pick the one done better. But I do not expect everyone
| else to put as much weight on it.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Any typefaces you'd recommend?
| TomMasz wrote:
| Sadly, all that matters is it's free of any "DEI" connotations.
| LucasFonts wrote:
| Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO
| Luc(as) de Groot's thoughts on the matter:
|
| Back to bad...
|
| Deciding to ditch Calibri as a 'wasteful diversity' font is both
| hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern
| computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to
| replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite.
| Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons. Calibri
| performs exceptionally well at small sizes and on standard office
| monitors, whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman create more
| visual disturbance. Although serif fonts work well on high-
| resolution displays, such as those found on modern smartphones,
| the serifs can introduce unnecessary visual noise on typical
| office screens and be particularly problematic for users with
| impaired vision, such as older adults.
|
| Professional typography can be achieved with serif or sans serif
| fonts. However, that is not very easy with Times New Roman, a
| typeface older than the current president. 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 a high quality.
|
| Depending on the situation, fonts with serifs are often
| considered more classic, but they take more work to get right.
| While a skilled typographer can produce excellent results with
| Times New Roman, using the digital default version is not
| considered professional practice. This font only offers two
| weights, Regular and Bold, and the Bold version has a very
| different design that does not fit well. There are many better
| serif typefaces available. The digital version of Times New
| Roman, developed in the early days of computing, includes only
| minimal adjustments to letter pairs. This is particularly
| noticeable in all-capital words such as 'CHICAGO', where the
| spacing is inconsistent: the letters 'HIC' are tightly packed,
| while 'CAG' are spaced too far apart. By contrast, Calibri
| incorporates extensive spacing adjustments and language-specific
| refinements.
|
| This decision takes the administration back to the past and back
| to bad.
|
| (Microsoft could not rectify spacing issues in Times New Roman
| without altering the appearance of existing documents.)
| loughnane wrote:
| Fyi since your account is new. It's a faux pas here to have a
| "company" account.
| otterley wrote:
| The company may well consist of only the poster himself.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Not so, according to their website.
| 3rodents wrote:
| That's not true. Sincere engagement is what people expect. A
| copy-and-paste of a statement is less desirable than, say,
| Lucas himself coming to post his thoughts, but it is still
| valuable and not a faux pas. The spirit of HN is: does the
| post or comment add something of value?
| umanwizard wrote:
| Says who? I've never heard that, and am not even close to
| new.
| forzerpendulum wrote:
| It's heavily implied through social observation here on the
| site. Just like how "memes and quippy references" are
| frowned upon, which you immediately pointed out in a
| separate comment. Since you're not new, you just outed
| yourself as someone who has just enough social awareness to
| understand a small subset of what's implicitly accepted
| here, but you haven't fully developed the mental capacity
| for implications more than one layer deep.
| yawaramin wrote:
| SQLite would like to have a word...
| derbOac wrote:
| Personally, I don't have a problem with them changing fonts. I
| personally think Times isn't a great choice for the reasons
| articulated in that statement (something open and more legible
| seems better to me), but I don't think it's a horrible choice
| either (it's standard and efficient with space). If the State
| Department wants to use a certain font, it's their prerogative.
|
| What bothers me about the decision is their rationale. If they
| had just switched without any explanation, it would have seemed
| more judicious and politic, befitting a department of state.
| Even better would be to announce a thoughtful font choice with
| reasoning based on the font itself, without defaulting to some
| thoughtless option "because that's the way it was done in the
| past", and moving away from the existing choice "because DEI".
| As it is, in my opinion, they made themselves look like idiots
| by obsessing over fonts from the perspective of something like
| DEI, as if they are paranoid over any possible subatom of DEI
| infecting their presence. Rubio couldn't just make it about the
| font, so to speak, he had to get hung up on irrelevant details
| which makes him (in my opinion) look worse than anything he
| might be criticizing.
|
| If you read the original announcement, my impression was that
| the choice of Calibri was because it it made state department
| functions easier as Calibri was the default in commonly used
| software (which seems kind of a poor reason to me, but one I
| can respect on practicality grounds). Legibility was also a
| concern (as it should be in my opinion). So something
| functional about Calibri (legibility) becomes "DEI" which is
| almost like cooties for this administration. Even if you
| disagree about the legibility of Calibri, denouncing legibility
| as a criterion per se seems absurd to me.
|
| The whole decision seems like a joke to me and a lost
| opportunity to set a decent design standard.
| halostatue wrote:
| > The whole decision seems like a joke to me and a lost
| opportunity to set a decent design standard.
|
| That would require that the individuals involved actually
| have _taste_. Instead, as with everything else from this
| administration, it 's a toot on their favourite dog whistle.
| ericmay wrote:
| Donald Trump and, frankly, those around him in general are
| what poor people think rich people are like, but I wouldn't
| exactly be one to claim that the design language used by
| the Biden Administration, like switching to Calibri, are
| very tasteful either. In leftist popular culture there is a
| love for modernist style architecture, minimalism, and a
| disrespect for building beautiful things that cost a lot of
| money or time. Rightwing circles have their own problems
| here too, to be fair.
|
| But mandating Greco-Roman architecture by the Trump
| administration for federal buildings was actually a huge
| win for taste and design. Though unfortunately many people
| have become confused about what good design is or the
| reason to choose that architecture style can't be overcome
| by their distaste for President Trump or his
| administration, which is very arguably deserved based on
| their conduct, speech, or mannerisms.
|
| When we take away formality or tradition from governmental
| institutions you take away pieces of civilization and
| governmental authority that we, really can't afford to
| lose. When government buildings are designed to look like
| shit, for example, one might come to believe the government
| is shit too (Democrat or Republican run) and the next thing
| you know you're running red lights or flipping off the
| court because the document they sent you in the mail
| doesn't look scary and official.
|
| Secretary Duffy was right too about airline travel. Well,
| there is another to unpack there. Flying is lame compared
| to rail unless you're flying across the country, and being
| shaken down by the TSA is undignified and thus people dress
| to meet the lack of dignity and respect the government
| shows them at the airline terminal.
|
| But he's not wrong.
|
| When you put more care into how you dress you instinctively
| put more care into how you treat others and how you dress
| impacts how others treat you. I'm not suggesting a mandate
| or anything, but I'll fly in a suit and tie easily and
| comfortably all day long over stained sweatpants and
| bringing my comfort dog on to the flight to annoy everyone.
| Dress how you want, but if you can't take care of the
| basics I'm not sure where else you think society is going
| other than downhill in a fashion.
| jfengel wrote:
| I do find it faintly ironic that Sort Of Greek Or Roman
| Or Something architecture was the villain in Ayn Rand's
| novel.
|
| Living here in DC I don't especially mind Federalist
| Architecture, even though it does look like somebody saw
| some photos of Rome and Athens and kinda mashed them
| together. But I don't love insisting that a 19th century
| view of the second century BC must forevermore be the
| only possible taste.
| ericmay wrote:
| If you have another architectural style for western
| civilization which bases its institutions on Greece and
| Rome, I'd be interested in learning more about it. It's
| not necessarily about a 19th century view of 2nd century
| BC architectural concepts (which itself is a bit of a
| farce of a comment) but more so about anchoring the
| longevity and legitimacy of governmental institutions to
| a historical heritage.
|
| Similarly I wouldn't recommend, say, that the Afghani
| people or Mongolia for example build federalist or Greco-
| Roman style architecture for their government buildings
| as it wouldn't make much sense and wouldn't have any
| basis in their history.
|
| There's also some science to it and we know the
| asymmetrical buildings and buildings which make entrances
| and other expected features hard to find cause measurable
| levels of stress and anxiety in the observer. Hostile
| architecture.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| Honest question: do you have any financial stake in this? I'm
| assuming you don't get paid per-document or whatever but do you
| have any sort of income dependent on Microsoft shipping your
| font with outlook (whether as the default font or not)?
|
| I don't mean to accuse you of anything but to 99% of the
| population this is a complete nothingburger and it looks
| ridiculous that anybody would care (this cuts both ways btw I
| also think Rubio is being a cringy idiot). I just don't
| understand what the big deal is here and I really cannot
| understand why anybody (on either "side") cares.
| croisillon wrote:
| repost ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46229533
| layer8 wrote:
| Verdana is more readable on low-resolution screens than
| Calibri. I never understood why they didn't use the former,
| which already existed, and just extended its character
| repertoire a bit.
| yawaramin wrote:
| Tbh they should have just mandated it to Aptos for new
| communications, with TNR and Calibri acceptable for old devices
| that have not been updated yet. Having people spend effort
| overriding the default font on their machine is frankly a waste
| of taxpayer dollars.
| austy69 wrote:
| > The general public doesn't perceive serif typefaces as
| professional and authoritative, a priori, before prioritizing
| their use in formal settings. Instead, people first observe that
| government, academia, and corporate workplaces disproportionately
| use serif faces -- or are trained to use them -- and only then
| infer that serifs must mean professionalism and authority.
|
| A difficult to stomach claim followed up with evidence that I
| think supports the opposite than the author intended: the font
| being in used in _The Times of London_ , which is indeed
| authoritative and professional despite it being written on cheap
| paper.
|
| On another note, I would throw up if I had to read legal
| documents all day in a sans-serif font.
| croes wrote:
| The font was used by the London Times until 1972.
|
| And nobody thinks of the London Times when he sees Times New
| Roman. It's just a default font many used in Word.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I too stopped when I read that sentence. It's like saying
| someone can't tell the difference in professionalism between
| someone in a well tailored three piece suit vs. a sweater and
| jeans until they've been taught.
|
| Ornateness itself is associated with being attentive to detail
| and likely more wealthy.
|
| And even if you take them at their word, it's a distinction
| without a difference. Serif is known to be more professional.
|
| But! As many have pointed out, and he does about TNR in the
| article: the default font for documents tends to suggest
| apathy. That argument against TNR is just as strong for
| Calibri. And there are far better looking, more functional
| fonts than either of these two.
| tevon wrote:
| Completely agree. This statement is immediately disproven by
| the authors following points. Eg pointing out that the supreme
| court, and other authoritative bodies exclusively use serif
| fonts...
|
| Of course there is no "a priori", the general public doesn't
| know what a letter is "a priori" until they are taught. At the
| same time they are taught which fonts are formal and
| authoritative and which are not.
|
| Everyone knows Comic Sans is not appropriate for a legal brief.
| No matter if that is "a priori" or not.
| kace91 wrote:
| My first immediate mental connection from serif fonts is the
| signs in ancient Roman or Roman inspired monuments.
|
| But I am southern European so it's a relatively common sight, I
| wonder if Americans view them differently.
| jamesliudotcc wrote:
| As for Calibri, even Microsoft has moved on. They designed a
| successor font family for even better readability, and that
| happened before the State Department changed to Calibri. It also
| has serif variants.
|
| https://microsoft.design/articles/a-change-of-typeface-micro...
|
| No knock on Calibri, which I admire.
|
| (edited to put the link on its own line.)
| otterley wrote:
| This was discussed in the article.
| djoldman wrote:
| From the linked https://federalcourt.press/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/03/Eighth...
|
| > Typographic decisions should be made for a purpose. The Times
| of London chose the typeface Times New Roman to serve an audience
| looking for a quick read. Lawyers don't want their audience to
| read fast and throw the document away; they want to maximize
| retention. Achieving that goal requires a different approach--
| different typefaces, different column widths, different writing
| conventions. Briefs are like books rather than newspapers. The
| most important piece of advice we can offer is this: read some
| good books and try to make your briefs more like them.
|
| This is somewhat ironic as, if I'm not mistaken, it is written by
| lawyers and uses Times New Roman. (Does the 8th circuit want the
| reader to read fast and throw the document away?)
| Kwpolska wrote:
| This document is typeset in New Century Schoolbook.
| djoldman wrote:
| Hrm, interesting: I couldn't tell the difference.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| "Instead, people first observe that government, academia, and
| corporate workplaces disproportionately use serif faces -- or are
| trained to use them -- and only then infer that serifs must mean
| professionalism and authority."
|
| This is an aside, but many people would benefit from appreciating
| what is observed here, because it impacts an enormous numbers of
| preferences and perceptions people hold.
|
| A good example is 24 FPS in cinema, which we generally attribute
| to high quality movies, baked in our value system via a
| technical/financial limit imposed a century ago. If a movie is
| presented any higher it gets mentally mapped with soap operas and
| low quality sitcoms, and it is disorienting to people. The Hobbit
| tried upping to 48FPS and it was described as "resembling low-
| budget video like American daytime soap operas rather than
| cinematic film". Higher quality TV dramas shoot at 24 FPS,
| intentionally forcing the 3:2 pulldown for TV presentation to
| signal "no, compare me to a movie not those other TV shows".
|
| There are many areas in our life where we're judging things by
| this signalling criteria, and not by any real objective measure,
| yet people will often invent objective measures to assuage
| themselves that their values aren't so easily manipulated. Bring
| up 24FPS being a baked in _limitation_ rather than some pinnacle
| of film making and many will start contriving why no, they
| actually prefer it because... It 's all just noise.
| freetanga wrote:
| I guess this is the thing preventing the release of the Epsteins
| files...
|
| I imagine a 20-strong commission deciding whether to publish them
| in colibri or times new Roman.
|
| Taxes at work
| Kwpolska wrote:
| > The Supreme Court's [...] opinions are typeset in Century
| Schoolbook from that family. Originating in the 19th century, the
| typeface features more expansive proportions, balanced stroke
| contrast, and an elegant form, exuding a far more assertive
| presence than Times New Roman. As the name suggests, it also
| began life as a textbook face, optimized for legibility. With
| proper typesetting, it reads far better than a haphazardly
| produced Word document set in Times New Roman.
|
| The example document is typeset in Century Schoolbook, with the
| exception of "SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES", which is
| typeset in Times New Roman.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Sure, Times New Roman is not a great font and comes with many
| negative connotations. But having official government
| communication look like a highschoolers first digital essay is
| even worse.
|
| The obvious solution is doing what many large companies, as well
| as other governments are doing. Create your own Font. (e.g.
| https://styleguide.bundesregierung.de/sg-de/basiselemente/sc...
| https://www.ibm.com/plex/)
| piker wrote:
| One thing that I don't see much mentioned in the article or the
| comments is that for Word documents at least, Times New Roman may
| be a more portable default if you want the document to render
| identically across platforms. Not everyone has Word and Word
| proprietary fonts installed. Times is proprietary but available
| on Linux and MacOS and has a metric compatible substitute in the
| open source. Not sure about Calibre.
|
| Yes, fonts can be bundled with a document but that might impose
| legal considerations as well as technical.
|
| Using more "standard" fonts like Times New Roman might thus help
| fight against the word processing monopoly.
| necovek wrote:
| Most font licenses allow one to embed it into a document and
| then use that document as intended (to print, view...), but do
| not extend the license to the document recipient to extract the
| font and use it in newly created documents.
|
| Using a common font like Times-compatible (metrics-wise) does
| help to an extent, but it can still fall off quickly with
| different ligatures, Unicode-combining character support etc.
| To be honest, I've never seen a Word document that looks
| exactly the same when opened on two Windows computers, even if
| those two computers should be roughly the same (corporate
| managed computers): I remember it used to be affected by print
| settings back in the day, but not sure what triggers it today.
|
| Admittedly, I only use Windows computers and Word documents the
| last few days at work, as I've been in the Linux world for the
| last ~27 years otherwise.
| piker wrote:
| > Most font licenses allow one to embed it into a document
| and then use that document as intended (to print, view...),
| but do not extend the license to the document recipient to
| extract the font and use it in newly created documents.
|
| Yes, but most users wouldn't have a clue that is even an
| issue or why and how to do the embedding.
| atorodius wrote:
| Tangential but did not see it mentioned: Calibri must have been
| the Microsoft Word default at some point, at least in some parts
| of the world, because seeing it makes me think this is a Word
| document by a person that did not change the default font.
| tuetuopay wrote:
| It absolutely was, from Office 2007 up to Office 365 where they
| switched to Aptos (2023-ish?)
| internet2000 wrote:
| This blog post has good fundamentals but ends up missing the
| mark. Is Times New Roman the perfect serif? Obviously not. Is it
| better than Calibri? Yes. Is "hey go back to how things were
| before" the simplest plan to execute? Also yes.
|
| I personally would've liked Georgia since I imagine that's
| similarly ubiquitous. People suggesting a custom typeface are out
| of their mind.
| tevon wrote:
| The argument here doesn't hold up for me.
|
| The author states "The formality and authority of serif typefaces
| are largely socially constructed, and Times New Roman's origin
| story and design constraints don't express these qualities."
|
| Yes, formality and authority are both, quite literally, social
| constructs. There is NO "natural" or "universal" formality or
| even authority without human social input.
|
| I would also argue that, though most users cannot distinguish
| between a serif and sans serif font, they DO understand the serif
| fonts connote formality. eg in high school they were told to
| submit their papers in a serif font, or where they read a court
| opinion they also read serif (even if not the same font).
|
| Sure, the State Department could have selected a different serif
| font. But a reversion to what was previously used seems
| completely normal.
|
| Secondarily, I do think Calibri looks far too casual for the
| State Department. Its what I would use if I were quickly printing
| out my notes...
| sgnelson wrote:
| I agree with the critique on the "socially constructed" part of
| this article.
|
| I'd also add that since it was literally _The Times_ newspaper
| which created the font, and it was considered one of _the
| papers of record_ for the time (no pun intended), the font was
| probably designed to have a sense of accuracy, truth and
| authority. In other words, the institution that created the
| font is very much part of the socially constructed aspect of
| this font. In this case giving it that air of authority via it
| 's relationship with a newspaper of record.
| sgnelson wrote:
| Since TNR was designed for print and thus it seems they expected
| the ink to "bleed" and make the characters appear thicker than
| they would have been for the actual (leaded?) type face, was this
| taken into account when turning it into a digital type face?
|
| From reading the article, it appears the answer is no. Has anyone
| made a TNR digital font that would account for how it would look
| if printed on 1900's newsprint?
| mlsu wrote:
| It's so frustrating. We already created a font for government
| communication, Public Sans. It looks great, it's very strong,
| neutral, readable, and respectable. Clearly a lot of effort went
| into making it accessible etc.
|
| But we have to throw that away because the wrong party was in
| charge when it happened.
|
| https://public-sans.digital.gov/
|
| I'm so sick of this RETVRN crap happening seemingly everywhere.
| Yes, public buildings and typefaces and etc are uglier than they
| used to be. That's not because our aesthetic standards changed;
| it's because we financialized and technologized the entire
| economy and made it impossible to make an honest living as a
| plasterworker, typesetter, designer, etc. Those old buildings are
| beautiful because they were made by human beings who were allowed
| to develop their skills and aesthetic preferences outside of a
| completely efficientized, marketized, computerized system.
|
| When we RETVRN by telling the machine to output different
| aesthetic preferences, it will emit a cheap simulacra of the
| beauty of the past. Which imo is infinitely more depressing than
| any of the modern crap we have now. Think Kentucky suburb
| McMansions, everywhere, forever. That's what these guys want.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| Public Sans was created during Trump's first term tho.
| schmuckonwheels wrote:
| In between all the political bitching, no one has ever noted the
| fact that TNR will render correctly on basically any computer
| built in the last 30 years, including crusty UNIX workstations
| from the 90s.
| willturman wrote:
| This is mentioned in the post:
|
| > _Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman's long
| reign isn't aesthetic excellence, but practicality and inertia.
| Times New Roman was among the small set of typefaces bundled
| with early versions of Windows. It was also promoted as "web-
| safe," meaning webmasters could reasonably assume it would
| render properly across platforms. In the early era of
| digitalization, choosing Times New Roman was often less a
| deliberate endorsement than a default imposed by limited
| options. Over time, the habit hardened into a standard, and
| institutions began to require it without much reflection,
| effectively borrowing their own authority to confer authority
| upon the typeface._
| kps wrote:
| And Times is one of the three original Postscript core
| typefaces, along with Helvetica and Courier.
| necovek wrote:
| When I jumped into my GNU/Linux journey in late 90s, TNR was
| nowhere to be found, and I believe is only available through
| "ms-ttcorefonts" or whatever the package is called (IOW, Times
| New Roman actually comes from Microsoft).
|
| I believe "Times" is the venerable standard, and has been
| present on Unices and Macs since... forever. Now, TNR is the
| same metrics-wise IIRC, and thus it was always a recommendation
| to use a fallback line of the form "Times New Roman, Times,
| serif".
| paulvnickerson wrote:
| Enemies of this administration have no idea how to pick their
| battles.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| The serious piece, that wants to be taken seriously, is written
| in a serif font. That's my takeaway.
| macleginn wrote:
| More precisely, Lyon Text Web.
| TheGRS wrote:
| I think this whole thing could be summed up by: this is an
| acceptable change made with wildly bad rationale.
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