The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. There were sound reasons for moving away from Times: Calibri performs exceptionally well at small sizes and on standard office monitors, whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman tend to appear more distorted. While serif fonts are well-suited to high-resolution displays, such as those found on modern smartphones, on typical office screens the serifs introduce unnecessary visual noise and can be particularly problematic for users with impaired vision, such as older adults.
Professional typography can be achieved with both serif and sans-serif fonts. However, Times New Roman—a typeface older than the current president—presents unique challenges. 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 high quality.
Serif fonts are often perceived as more traditional, but they are also more demanding to use effectively. While a skilled typographer can, in theory, produce excellent results with Times, using it in its default digital form is not considered professional practice.
Calibri, by contrast, incorporates extensive spacing adjustments and language-specific refinements. The digital version of Times New Roman, developed in the early days of computing, offers only minimal kerning and letter-pair adjustments. This is especially evident in words set in all capitals—such as “CHICAGO”—where the spacing is inconsistent: the letters “HIC” are tightly packed, while “CAG” are spaced too far apart. Microsoft cannot rectify these issues without altering the appearance of existing documents.
(disclaimer: I am Dutch).
If you cannot say it then let me: that spiteful, revengeful petty-minded fuckwit needs to be told that it's a fucked decision of the first order, and that someone in his position has no right nor the time to be involved in grinding the minutiae of state so fine.
Heaven help us, please!
Damn, the diversity of people one can meet here on HN continues to amaze me. Even after almost 13 years.
> The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable.
The cruelty (in this case, against people with visual impairments) is the actual point, as always, and the appearance of "going back to the good old times" is the visual that's being sold to the gullibles.
Within this environment the decision to eschew the font that was expertly designed for present needs in favor of one designed in the past for different ones makes perfect sense.
That’s why Microsoft no longer sets it as default, and it is expected to be phased out by institutional consumers.
Calibri served its time. But it’s time is over.
This reads like your CEO is mixing an argument against serifs with an argument against Times specifically. Later on they make a case against Times' lack of support for more modern features in digital fonts, which is a fine argument, but a question comes to mind: is the solution a sans-serif font?
It seems to me upon reading the article that Rubio's staff, or Rubio himself, is being overly specific with the font and I suspect that, being uninformed, what they really want is a serif font rather than Times New Roman, specifically. Maybe I'm wrong.
In any case, I'd like for you/your CEO to make it clearer, if you will: do you believe official government communications should use a sans-serif font altogether or is it just a problem with Times? Or both?
On a more personal note, is there any serif font you'd suggest as an alternative?
Thank you. (And sorry if I read this wrong.)
What a waste of government time and spending.
Wild. I'm curious now if someone has an ordered list of fonts from the gayest to the straightest.
Was the switch to Calibri in 2023 also a waste of time and money, or are font switches only bad when the Trump administration does them?
> A cable dated December 9 sent to all U.S. diplomatic posts said that typography shapes the professionalism of an official document and Calibri is informal compared to serif typefaces. > "To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface," the cable said.
I don't read that purely as an "anti-woke" move, why did Reuters only highlight that part and not the bit about professionalism? I do indeed agree that serifs look more authoritative.
I'd love to know how that was determined. Given that:
"If different fonts are best for different people, you might imagine that the solution to the fonts problem would be a preference setting to allow each user to select the font that’s best for them.
This solution will not work, for two reasons. First, previous research on user-interface customization has found that most users don’t use preference settings, but simply make do with the default.
Second, and worse, users don’t know what’s best for them, so they can’t choose the best font, even if they were given the option to customize their fonts. In this study, participants read 14% faster in their fastest font (314 WPM, on average) compared to their most preferred font (275 WPM, on average)"
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/best-font-for-online-readin...
Keep in mind that the transgenic mouse breeding program used to make lab mice for research got defined because the President claimed Democrats were so woke they were funding "trans" mice research.
Half of what they are doing is virtue signalling and posturing without any real understanding of what they are doing.
Another issue is due to the font size and font metrics, how much space it will take up on the page, to be small enough to avoid wasting paper and ink but also not too small to read.
So, there are multiple issues in choosing the fonts; however, Times New Roman and Calibri are not the only two possible choices.
Maybe the government should make up their own (hopefully public domain) font, which would be suitable for their purposes (and avoiding needing proprietary fonts), and use that instead.
They have, public sans, courtesy of USWDS, and it does distinguish between l and I with a little hook/spur on lowercase el
https://public-sans.digital.gov/
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Public+Sans?preview.text=1...
I expect the leaders of a government deciding on matters that have a real impact on people's live, not on stuff that from a practical point of view is totally irrelevant.
Among Microsoft typefaces, Georgia would have been much better than Times New Roman, especially when read on displays, but even when printed.
There are of course even better choices, but Georgia is a familiar typeface for most people, it is similar enough to Times New Roman and the older versions of Georgia are free to use by anybody.
Georgia is not as condensed as Times New Roman, but here Times New Roman is the anomaly, as it is more condensed than a normal font, for the purpose of fitting within narrow newspaper columns.
From Windows 3.0 to Windows 98, I have used Times New Roman as my main text font in documents, because Windows did not include anything better, but immediately after the introduction of the superior Georgia I replaced Times New Roman with it for some years, until eventually I stopped relying on the bundled typefaces and I have bought some typefaces that I liked more, for use in all my documents. (Windows 3.0 did not have yet TTF fonts, with which the licensed Times New Roman was introduced later, but it already had a metrically equivalent Times font).
Only when used in a context where they can be confused. This is a situation where HN is going to give bad advice. Programmers care deeply about that stuff (i.e. "100l" is a long-valued integer literal in C and not the number 1001). Most people tend not to, and there is a long tradition of fonts being a little ambiguous in that space.
But yes, don't use Calibri in your editor.
There’s a few dozen off the shelf fonts that would work for 99.99% of people.
For those who it doesn’t work, deal with it. It’s a font. Or fallback to system font.
The biggest issue is that you don't replace a serif font with a sans-serif one "because diversity".
There's a reason signs on the highway are using sans-serif and there's a reason letters and books are using serif fonts.
I did both write and typeset books and honestly it's facepalming that the previous administration did switch to Calibri "because of diversity and because it's now the default in Word".
Ah, OK. Microsoft is, partly, behind the move. This explains that.
A print, then typewriter, then computer typeface emulates a written script but also takes on a life of its own. Handwriting in english is mostly gibberish these days because hardly anyone uses a pen anymore! However, it is mostly "cursive" and cursive is not the same as serif and sans.
English prides itself on not having diacritics, or accents or whatever that thing where you merge a A and E is called, unless they are borrowed: in which case all bets are off; or there is an r in the month and the moon is in Venus.
So you want a font and it needs to look lovely. If your O and 0 are not differentiated then you have failed. 2:Z?, l:L:1? Good.
I use a german style slash across the number seven when I write the number, even though my number one is nothing like a german one, which looks more like a lambda. I also slash a lone capital Zed. I slash a zero: 0 and dot an O when writing code on paper. Basically, when I write with a pen you are in absolutely no doubt what character I have written, unless the DTs kick in 8)
Many computer science people I respect are huge typeface nerds, but personally I could never see much value in focusing on it.
There's an irony: the _Times_ (of London) commissioned it in 1932 to improve the readability of its newspaper, which previously used a Didone/Modern style typeface.
I like Times New Roman and I find Calibri, a rounded-corner sans serif, to be an absolute abomination of milquetoast typography.
It really comes down to the fact that it's better to be functional, forms don't need to /look/ good they need to work well. For aesthetic things we can still use the pretty fonts.
The Dutch dev of Calibri commented on the history [1].
He makes a couple of good points, nuances. The main one I liked is related to your premise: it was that the Times New Roman font was optimized for printing newspapers whereas his successor was meant for computer screens.
Ultimately, IMO this is just bullying people with bad eyesight and dyslexia (and said bullying I can only regard as hatred towards minorities which reminds me of a different era). My father had MS and due to that bad eyesight. He had special glasses with a special lens to read. Of course any font change has a learning curve, but to me this just hits home as I've seen him struggle to read.
* condensed glyph widths, for ease of setting in narrow columns
* high x-heights and short ascenders and descenders, so lines can be set tighter and more text thus fitted on the page
* robust forms and serifs to allow for the tendency of newsprint to absorb and spread ink
These features don't necessarily translate to improved readability in other contexts.
And changing it back to Times New Roman isn't wasteful?
IMO the government should pick something available under an appropriate free license or commission a new font for the purpose.
(I personally much prefer Times New Roman to Calibri for printed documents, but that’s neither here nor there.)
Unfortunately, it’s also intended to be not just accessible, but ”principles-driven”. Can’t have that. (More seriously, it’s probably more appropriate for screens than print)
There is a metric-compatible open alternative to Calibri (Carlito) but it seems more vulnerable to lawyer shenanigans and doesn't have extensive tool support.
I have only bad memories of using it since I directly associate it with endless formatting fixes for my diploma and course works.
I would argue that it seems more like the State Department is searching for distraction moreso than direction. From the murders, theft, and the epstien files.
Firstly, I thought sans-serif typefaces were encouraged for digital media because they read better than serif fonts. But now that high pixel density displays have permeated the market, this might be a moot point.
On another note, I wonder how much of the hate TNR gets stems from its ubiquity for having been installed on almost all personal computers for the past n decades.
Paganis are beautifully designed cars, but the labelling of buttons and toggles inside the center console look cheap (IMO) because their font seems straight out of a quickly made flyer designed by bored teacher who just discovered Word Art.
And Comic Sans for letters sent to friends finishing design school, obviously.
There are all sorts of statistical rules falling out of studies about where the long/short divide is, ambient lighting, blah blah blah - but human vision is even more variable than most biological quantities, so in the end general rules are the best one can really do.
Here of course, it's nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs, while the captain targets the next iceberg "to teach the ice a lesson!"
"It’s like they spent $300 million on the movie, and then.. They just used Papyrus."
- Kanye West
A simple correction would stop this spiral, but Reuters appears committed to forging a bold new era in which terminology is chosen at random, like drawing Scrabble tiles from a bag and declaring them journalism.
I didn't know this, and this explanation isn't really helping. (I did know there's a difference between typeface and font, but no idea what).
Why would this be basic knowledge when all most people ever have to deal with is the font options in Word?
Come on, they're writing for a general audience, not a bunch of pedantic typographers and developers.
> a society that now casually refers to all pasta as "spaghetti"
I have never experienced this; in what contexts have you?
> taught to children
We were 100%, never taught this (in the UK).
> A simple correction would stop this spiral
It wouldn't, it would just mean fewer people understood what the story was about.
Serif fonts have some readability features of their own, specifically for printed word.
What is involved in changing the font for a government agency?
In 1941 Adolf Hitler personally gave order to make the use of the Antiqua mandatory and forbade the use of Fraktur and Schwabacher typefaces.
In an “Action Request” memo obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Rubio said that switching back to the use of Times New Roman would “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work.” Calibri is “informal” when compared to serif typefaces like Times New Roman, the order said, and “clashes” with the department’s official letterhead.
As far back as I can recall, this is a politician who has railed against 'political correctness'.
I got politely informed to not use NYTimes font in a paper I turned-in when I was in college. On that occasion, it was an accident. I'd taken the file to school to print, and my owiginal font selection had been replaced by the default. My professor merely said that it is hard to read by people with older eyes.
Several years later, I understand. My default font is now set for Liberation Sans. I have trouble reading 'decorative' fonts. For printouts, I use Liberation Mono.
https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/12/state-department-ret...
(https://practicaltypography.com/times-new-roman-alternatives...)
> When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, “I submitted to the font of least resistance.” Times New Roman is not a font choice so much as the absence of a font choice, like the blackness of deep space is not a color. To look at Times New Roman is to gaze into the void.
> If you have a choice about using Times New Roman, please stop. Use something else.
And on Calibri:
(https://practicaltypography.com/calibri-alternatives.html)
> Like Cambria, Calibri works well on screen. But in print, its rounded corners make body text look soft. If you need a clean sans serif font, you have better options.
- - -
To telegraph an identity, TNR is a good choice for this administration; so, credit where due, well played. Still, I would have gone with Comic Sans.
But I have no idea what font was used in the book I just finished reading or the book that I'm returning to later today. My main question about a font is whether I can read it with old eyes.
I do agree that designers should care about these matters. I'll add that for some portion of the reading public TNR more likely means The New Republic than Times New Roman.
[Five minutes later: the book just finished, What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, appears to be set in Palatino, never a favorite of mine. The one I'm returning to, I'm not sure.]
To spite these people I force the use of Arial on the worst offenders. The list is now a couple of thousand websites long.
I don't often genuinely laugh out loud at comments on HN, but that one was good! Subtle, classy, and a gentle yet effective dig.
Funny, I would have gone with Tannenberg
I’ll personally be taking my votes to supporters of Helvetica next election.
When senior government officials are spending time & public mindshare/attention on whether a particular font is or is not diverse then you know it is game over.
The details don't matter...this being a topic at all is the news
this approach is garbage, but i find your second line a bit odd.
it is also funny you bring up china because china changed their entire character system for diversity reasons (less educated people couldn't read).
Bro what. It was the default font in Microsoft for many years thus, it was the default font for most office software for many years -- just like Times New Roman was before.
What.
Also in Word etc, if I've got to spend a lot of time in a large document, I'll usually edit the paragraph body style temporarily to something sans serif. It's just better on screen.
Yes, for sites that use unreadably thin fonts, such as https://stratechery.com
This administration truly sets a high standard for professional communication...
> S.V. Dáte, HuffPost’s senior White House correspondent, asked the White House earlier this month who suggested Budapest, Hungary, as the location for an upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded: “Your mom did.” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung then followed up: “Your mom.”
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
That's interesting because I've long been under the impression that serif fonts promoted easier reading. As such, serif fonts could / should be considered more accessible.
HN should rejoice in the US gov using a font that is open and truly cross platform.
But there are open-source metrically-compatible alternatives to all of them, commonly included in Linux distributions and/or office suites like LibreOffice.
Probably the most popular set is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croscore_fonts, with Tinos, Arimo, Cousine, and in the extended set Carlito and Caladea. The former most popular set is probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_fonts, with Liberation {Serif, Sans, Mono}.
But a given system is definitely less likely to have a Calibri alternative than a Times New Roman alternative.
I don't think it's included by default but the font itself will just work once you install it.
As for open fonts (can fonts even be truly closed in the first place?), Times New Roman is just as closed and proprietary as Calibri is.
It is not so bad if you are using it for paragraphs but I can't stand the way serifed fonts come out if I am setting display text for a poster unless I manually take over and adjust the kerning. After I had this problem I was wondering if I was the only one or what other people did so I looked at posters people had put up around campus and had a really hard time finding posters where people were using serifed fonts in large sizes and my guess is people either start out with sans or they tried something with serifs but changed their mind because it looked wrong.
Strange times to live in.
But then it's bigger, for example to replace Time New Roman 10 it would require Noto Serif 8.5.
> calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move,
> The department under Blinken in early January 2023 had switched to Calibri, a modern sans-serif font,
> saying this was a more accessible font for people with disabilities
[1] https://www.amazon.es/-/en/gp/product/8417427627?ref_=dbs_m_...
> [...] and at some point, you will have to decide whether serifs are daring statements of modernity, or tools of hegemonic oppression that implicitly support feudalism and illiteracy
[1] https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf
I do wish they’d gone for a classier serif though; Garamond was right there.
Who care about fonts? Boring. Why not jazz it up by mentioning coups during an administration that previously tried to pull of a coup attempt. Any administration officials names and coup should not be in the same sentence unless they attempt another one(or unless it's talking about the previous one).
So to reiterate, the department decided to move on from the 1992 default Word font to the 2007 Word default (1 year after it was no longer the default).
Nothing is safe from politics when even a font choice has become "woke".
I love if someone remembers that event better and can provide a link. My memory serves it was about a decade or so ago.
Marco Rubio Orders State Dept to Stop Using Calibri Font in Anti-DEI Push
https://gizmodo.com/marco-rubio-orders-state-dept-to-stop-us...
Who defines decorum and professionalism? Because I’d say this change is anything but.
Then again, this is very partisan and so subjective. Still, I’m not a fan of a government pushing certain esthetics with such a BS justification.
<https://web.archive.org/web/20151207071605/http://historywei...>
Rubio, however, specifically pointed out the symbolic (and malicious) gesture of his whole switch back to Times New Roman.
The left didn't react pettily. Please stop thinking the left are the right are the same when the facts show they are not. The left's change was for a demonstrative benefit. The right is doing it so fuck over people. You think these are the same.
https://archive.ph/2025.12.10-001235/https://www.nytimes.com...
Switching from Calibri back to Times New Roman "because DEI" 100% tracks with this administration's spiteful Project 2025 vandalism.
By that measure, I could create a font with explicit godly origin, because I see myself as a direct descendant of God.
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
To be fair, in response to this dynamic the left has gotten pretty good at focusing on hate for the other side, too. We all lose when nobody wants to talk policy any more.
Bad news: Missed opportunity for Fraktur to make a comeback.
Otherwise, seems kinda benign and random.
How pitiful do you have to be as Secretary of State to get into minutiae about fonts, anyway?
Calibri became the State font in Jan 2023.
Roboto has a dual nature. It has a mechanical skeleton and the forms are largely geometric. At the same time, the font features friendly and open curves. While some grotesks distort their letterforms to force a rigid rhythm, Roboto doesn’t compromise, allowing letters to be settled into their natural width. This makes for a more natural reading rhythm more commonly found in humanist and serif types.
A Sancerre with a long, sweet finish.
Secretary Antony Blinken on NPR's Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me! About the U.S. Department of State moving from Times New Roman to Calibri.
ahem... We're not the 1st of April...
Terry Gilliam at his most deranged couldn't dream up this nonsense.
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.
> 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.
You also get Calibri if you search for it, but not Zapf Dingbats.
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
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.
And it works!
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.
Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
207 points|danso|3 years ago|256 comments
Might want to start by banning tweeting then.
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
If they want to look like a proper government then the correct answer is monospace and in ALL CAPS just like FAA NOTAMS, obviously.
/s
Is Trump incapable of hiring anyone borderline competent?
Now memory safety sounds too woke, and Trump administration will be moving back to pure C.
We live in the world were everything is now "vibed" really.