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State Department to switch from "woke" default Microsoft font to old British newspaper typeface [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2025-12-10  

Calibri, a modern sans-serif typeface designed to be readable on screen and page alike, was commissioned by Microsoft and made the Office suite default in 2006. Secretary of State Marco Rubio finds it too woke and has ordered diplomats to use the previous default: Times New Roman, designed for British newspaper The Times in 1931.

The underlying problem, for Rubio and the Trump administration, is that Calibri was crafted to be more easily read by people with vision impairments and dyslexia, and is therefore is a "diversity, equity and inclusion" measure to be gotten rid of. Its use was formally standardized at the State Department under the previous administration of Joe Biden.

Mr. Rubio's directive to all diplomatic posts around the world blamed "radical" 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.

The problem with Times New Roman was that it was intended for newsprint, where the ink will spread into the fibers, thickening the letterforms. On smooth paper, its letterforms are thin and spindly. On older screens, pixelation mangles them entirely. If you wanted to switch to an old-fashioned, formal-looking serif typeface because you wanted to Make Typography Great Again, there are many better options than Times New Roman. Microsoft provided Constantia with Calibri. Sometimes, it's important to remember that these guys are just plain stupid.

For an administration that gets upset when people compare it to fascist-era Germany, getting wound up by "woke" fonts won't help. The Nazis embraced the old-timey calligraphic Fraktur only to abandon it after it decided it looked too Jewish.

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