US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has very strong feelings about the typeface used in his department, and has demanded that diplomats dump Calibri and return to Times New Roman, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.
Rubio calls Calibri “informal” compared to Times New Roman, which is a more traditional, serif font. He claims it clashes with the department’s official letterhead and that reverting to Times New Roman will “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work.”
For the record, Calibri is no Comic Sans. It replaced Times New Roman as the standard in Microsoft Office in 2007, and offers a more modern, yet professional look. (Times New Roman’s roots go back to 1923.) However, the State Department continued to use Times New Roman until 2023, when then-Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made the switch with a memo titled “The Times (New Roman) are a-Changin,” according to The Washington Post.
The move was a recommendation from Blinken’s office of diversity and inclusion, with the goal of making it easier for people with disabilities to read department documents on screen readers and other assistive technologies.
The issue boils down to serifs, or a small decorative line attached to letters in fonts like Times New Roman. Some experts say this makes the letters more difficult to read, while others argue they improve readability. The word “Ill,” (ill) for example, looks like the same three letters when capitalized, and is more distinguishable with the extra detail. Calibri is also a more spaced, open font, which could make it easier to read, though it also lengthens the size of documents.
In his memo, titled “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper,” Rubio admits that the switch to Calibri “was not among the department’s most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful instances of DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility].” But he contends that it “achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence.”
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Upon returning to office in January, President Trump immediately targeted DEI initiatives with an executive order that called them “radical and wasteful.”
Trump, who has made some interesting style choices at the White House lately, has also called for more classical architecture in Washington, DC, citing the importance of civic buildings to the founding fathers, who never had the chance to fight about fonts.
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