alt Hacker NewsRubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
Comments
> 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
Make Arial Great Again
I'm dyslexic and I much prefer to read Times New Roman to Calibri. I think it's a good move.
This headline is obnoxious
Wasn't there was a previous "coup" that changed it from TNR to Calibri? TNR is nicer though.
Today is a good day to learn about Nazi Germany's Normal Type Decree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwabacher#History
The princess and the pea.
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!
Didn't I read somewhere that serif fonts are better for dyslexia
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).
The ole DEIA font.
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 is silly as Montserrat is the only true choice.
The only non-partisan choice is comic sans.
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.
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.
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.
I for one am grateful someone is finally standing up to these lunatic radical typographers and their diversity, equity and italics tyranny.
>>decorum and professionalism Yes, the hallmark of the Trump administration.
The current administration will do anything to distract folks from the corruption, fraud, grift and incompetence.
And it works!
Apparently sans-serif is "woke" or something. Cleek's Law meets Poe's.
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.
Comic Sans might have been a more appropriate choice. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Once again Garamond is passed over. I truly live in dark times.
Bullshit looks better with serifs?
Ah yes Calibri is now "DEI". Rubio don't you have a real job?
It's beyond satire that US conservatives are now somehow upset about certain fonts being woke.
Previously:
Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
207 points|danso|3 years ago|256 comments
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.
> present a unified, professional voice in all communications
Might want to start by banning tweeting then.
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
I’m surprised this administration did not chose Comic Sans as the default font.
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.
I'm glad to see that a government elected by rural, blue-collar workers is tackling the issues those workers care most about.
/s
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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.
This is Michael Scott levels of managerial nonsense, bloody hell.
Is Trump incapable of hiring anyone borderline competent?
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.
Stopped clock, twice right?
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.