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?
Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
331–340 of 738 posts
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#332Calibri font has "I" and "l" the same, according to Wikipedia. A better font should avoid characters being too similar (such as "I" and "l" and "1"). 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 Calibr…
> Maybe the government should make up their own 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...
Is USWDS still a thing? I thought they were DOGED out of existence.
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#333Calibri font has "I" and "l" the same, according to Wikipedia. A better font should avoid characters being too similar (such as "I" and "l" and "1"). 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 Calibr…
No. I don’t want the gov wasting money making a fucking font.
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.
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say changing something for vague aesthetic reasons is far more wasteful than doing so to make things more accessible. Compare the cost of installing a curb cut vs. filling it back in because you think a straight curb looks "stronger."
serif vs sans serif is not "a vague aesthetic reason", it's the most fundamental typeface choice you can make, moreso than monospace (which is an artifact of some 19th century technology) Rubio is an attorney, and there are many stylistic conventions in the legal and judicial space, why ruffle those feathers by flouting them? if you are given a style guide for your PhD thesis, do you follow it or do you futz endlessl…
It seems like Rubio has chosen to futz endlessly with fonts rather than follow the established style guide.
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#335[deleted]
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Maybe the government should make up their own 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...
Is USWDS still a thing? I thought they were DOGED out of existence.
Good question, with a little searching I found that, in true DOGE fashion, there exists an executive order announcing a new "National Design Studio" which is tasked with updating USWDS
So why fonts are being managed by Rubio and not the Chief Design Officer is anyone's guess
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/08/fact-sheet-pr...
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#337Times New Roman is extremely common and often the only accepted font for official documents and colloquial works in post-soviet countries: https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2018-12-10_rossijskim_chinovni... . I have only bad memories of using it since I directly associate it with endless formatting fixes for my diploma and course works.
And bad keming. Though, that’s technically not a fault of the font itself.
Subtle and clever. You got a laugh out of me.
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#338As documented at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_Easter_eggs google search for "times new roman font" and the results are returned in that font. ( https://www.google.com/search?q=Times+New+Roman+Font for the lazy). Looks terrible on my screen.
To be honest, the first moment I saw the page, it did seem to give my eyes a negative reaction, but after reading a few of the results, it started to look fine pretty quickly.
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you're not spiting anyone, they don't even know about this, just wasting your time compiling a list of a thousand websites
Oh, I could have picked a other font. I just get a smug feeling when forcing these websites to use Arial. The main reason for using another font on these web pages is that their own choices are worse than not changing it. So that list of thousands of web pages is to make their web pages legible and more usable, not just to be a prick. I picked Arial so that I could tell the web pages apart from those who had the good…
Perhaps your smug feeling can cancel out the smug feeling the author/publisher had when picking a font before even knowing what they even want to write.
It's important to keep the smugness balanced, thanks for doing your part.
Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri
#340I've seen some comments about how Times New Roman was replaced with something else to improve readability by many. 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.
There's no irony in that: different medium.
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.