alt Hacker NewsRubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
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"To serif or not to serif?" that is now a question of our Times.
The left and right signalling is such a waste of everyone's time and effort. Reactive pettiness
Most federal courts require documents filed there to be in Times New Roman font.
> Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Biden-era move to the sans serif typeface “wasteful,” casting the return to Times New Roman as part of a push to stamp out diversity efforts.
https://archive.ph/2025.12.10-001235/https://www.nytimes.com...
Slightly related but today I learned if you Google a font the site changes to that font.
The motivation is truly awful, but the result? Thank goodness. Calibri just screams unprofessional
This makes me want to run for President on the platform of Comic Sans for all government documents.
Fell asleep in America and woke up in Lilliput
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!
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
I'm amazed by all these silly priorities some people can find.
I just realized that if you google the font (e.g. "Calibri font"), you get the search results in that font. Neat!
really good 1st of April joke !!! rotfl
ahem... We're not the 1st of April...
Make Arial Great Again
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.
Slightly tangential, is there any chance this is motivated by profit or someone making money off this?
Otherwise, seems kinda benign and random.
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
The first-world problems!
Don't a lot of courts use/mandate Century? Just use that. Better than TNR. If you can't afford a custom font…
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?
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).
Today is a good day to learn about Nazi Germany's Normal Type Decree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabacher#History
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.
The ole' turning around a failing effort with a rebrand.
Dog whistle for transphobic people.
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.
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.
But you [sometimes] still have to use courier filing in the courts?
If only this administration would limit its actions to such forms of bikeshedding...
You know what they always say…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 they’re using Word—and they definitely are—Aptos 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 could’ve been if Microsoft didn’t absolutely destroy it in the 90’s.
Open their mind. Show them the truth. This is your time.
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?
"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.
Such a dingbat move
This admin does like Roman stuff- like their salute
Glad my government continues to work hard on solving the important problems that affect real people like me.
I figured the big scandal would be some bloated government contract shelling out millions for Calibri licenses. But nope, turns out the guy just… doesn’t like the font. What an absolute clown show.
This headline is obnoxious
I'm dyslexic and I much prefer to read Times New Roman to Calibri. I think it's a good move.
What was wasted?
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?
> https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/addr...
> 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.
This change sounds like that "waste, fraud, and abuse" stuff.
If you add up all the government memos, forms, letters, contracts, publications, everything printed globally…
“wow. many serif. so pointy. much ink. such waste!” — Kabosu, probably
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.
I had to check this was actually Reuters and not The Onion. eye roll
Wasn't there was a previous "coup" that changed it from TNR to Calibri? TNR is nicer though.
Oh wow, Calibri is woke now. Have they been pushing government's Linux machines to move back to SysVinit yet?
The princess and the pea.
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.