Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

Posted by italophil 12/10/2025

Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri(www.reuters.com)

407 points | 691 commentspage 6

wltr 12/11/2025|

There was an event (or events?) in the past, when some past documents were forged, but with the default (in MS Word, I suppose) Calibre font, which was released years later. I wonder if this has something to do with it.

I love if someone remembers that event better and can provide a link. My memory serves it was about a decade or so ago.

Stratoscope 12/11/2025||

Additional reporting from Gizmodo:

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...

thih9 12/11/2025||

> To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products…

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.

goku12 12/11/2025|

Not exactly related, but this is also the government that keeps insisting that the tariffs are paid by the foreign exporters (now that's a BS justification by any government that warrants widespread panic). It's all about narratives. I wouldn't bother much with fact checking them.

cratermoon 12/10/2025||

Is it too off-topic or controversial to note that in January 1941 in an edict signed by Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler, the Nazis called for a ban on the future use of Judenlettern (Jewish fonts) like Fraktur?

<https://web.archive.org/web/20151207071605/http://historywei...>

hbogert 12/10/2025||

The left and right signalling is such a waste of everyone's time and effort. Reactive pettiness

miltonlost 12/10/2025||

Is it "signalling" when the left's change was for an accessibility reason, to enable more people to be able to easily read? Signaling means there's no tangible benefit to the change, so the Blinken's switch to a sans-serif font would not be signaling.

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.

mathgradthrow 12/11/2025|||

>Is it "signalling" when the left's change was for an accessibility reason, to enable more people to be able to easily read?

Uh, yes.

JetSetWilly 12/11/2025||||

[flagged]

oneeyedpigeon 12/11/2025||

Note that, even if that's all true (and I do agree that studies should have been conducted), the two positions are:

a) We made this change because we think it will help certain people

and

b) We made this change because we fundamentally disagree with attempts to help certain people, whether effective or not

I think b) is a lot worse than a). Or, to put it another way, has the current administration demonstrated a benefit from this change, or are they behaving at least as badly as "the left"?

JetSetWilly 12/11/2025||

No, you're just falling into the sort of left wing "people who disagree with me can only do so because they are a bad person" trap. You can read the full text of the actual memo (and a reasonable interpretation of it) below, but it appears to me that the principle reason as stated is that Calibri is less professional, inconsistent with all other government communications and even inconsistent letterheads on the very same department's material, and that appearance matters. It isn't in fact about "sticking it to the woke", but it does seem like the original decision to use Calibri was not based on anything and just about appearing to be woke.

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/full_text_of_marco_rubio_...

oneeyedpigeon 12/11/2025||

> No, you're just falling into the sort of left wing "people who disagree with me can only do so because they are a bad person" trap.

I'm not sure where this conclusion came from. I even acknowledged that the original change was problematic.

> the principle reason as stated is that Calibri is less professional

That's fair, but it doesn't erase the 'DEI' comment in the memo. If that weren't there, we might actually be having a discussion about the merits of one font vs. another.

> It isn't in fact about "sticking it to the woke"

Again, that might be believable if the memo hadn't explicitly complained about DEI.

JetSetWilly 12/11/2025||

DEI was mentioned in a footnote, it didn't seem to be the main thrust of the memo. I agree it would have been better to not mention it at all, the decision is perfectly defensible on the basis of all the previous non-footnoted points.

I apologise for my first comment, it seems like those critical of the latest decision are painting a simplistic picture - "this was one side attempting to be kind vs other side deliberately being unkind". But it doesn't appear to be the case to me.

SpicyLemonZest 12/10/2025|||

I think the concept of an accessible font is signaling. I don't think that Times New Roman is actually less legible than Calibri, and have never seen research claiming to find that Times New Roman in particular or serifs in general pose accessibility problems.

estearum 12/11/2025|||

"Decisions I know nothing about are signaling" is a phenomenally uncurious approach to life.

foldr 12/11/2025|||

I easily found some research by searching Google scholar:

https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2021/109668/109668.pdf

It's not a big difference, but apparently TNR was the worst of the fonts tested for OCR.

But anyway, there was no "signaling" about the change to Calibri. No-one ever tried to make a political issue out of it the way Rubio is now.

SpicyLemonZest 12/11/2025||

I’m not sure what you think I mean by “signaling”. This is a study of OCR performance, with no attempt to measure practical accessibility issues caused by the font difference which you and I agree is not big. I’m still very skeptical that even a single State Department employee’s ability to do a good job depends on which font the department uses.

If you say that it doesn’t matter whether changing the font had a large practical impact, because it’s a gesture in the right direction or helps build a culture of accessibility, I would classify that as signaling.

foldr 12/11/2025||

Classify it how you like, but a gesture towards building a culture of accessibility (if indeed that’s what this was) is hardly comparable to an attempt to score points against political opponents.

mitchbob 12/10/2025||

> 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...

nine_k 12/10/2025|

To actually reduce waste, they could have switched to a narrower typeface, such as Roboto Condensed. At least it would save some paper occasionally.

gjvc 12/11/2025||

Roboto Condensed is excellent. It saves space so more words can be read with each eye movement (saccades) and is very clear.

hs586 12/10/2025||

I just realized that if you google the font (e.g. "Calibri font"), you get the search results in that font. Neat!

_bohm 12/10/2025|

Works for lots of other fonts too :)

pengaru 12/11/2025||

If only this administration would limit its actions to such forms of bikeshedding...

itsjustjordan 12/10/2025||

Slightly related but today I learned if you Google a font the site changes to that font.

jdub 12/11/2025|

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.

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