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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

reuters.com

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Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#341

Post by Fnoord »

rtkwe wrote: post #307
dsevil wrote: post #283

I'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.

It may look better but it's harder to read basically across the board for anyone with difficulty distinguishing letters. Sans serif fonts are easier for people with dyslexia without going all the way to a dyslexia specific font. They're also generally far better for people with all sorts of poor vision. It really comes down to the fact that it's better to be functional, forms don't need to /look/ good they need to wo…

For aesthetic or other preferences you change the default font to whatever you please. The default font shouldn't be about aesthetics, it should be first and foremost about usability. Especially on printed media since there it cannot be changed in a whim.

A couple of years ago I went into archives of Dutch newspapers to learn whether and how the famine of hunger in Ukraine (known as Holodomor) was reported back in 1930's. Fuck me, it was hard to read those excerpts. But it is what it is. OCR could've converted the font. The problem is, is the OCR accurate? Like, is my search with keywords having a good SnR, or am I missing out on evidence?

Personally, Times New Roman was likely the reason I did not like Mozilla Thunderbird. I have to look into that.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#342

Post by carlosjobim »

contact9879 wrote: post #325
carlosjobim wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make much sense, since a typewriter will neither type Calibri nor Times New Roman. And OCR should only be needed for type written documents, because any document made with Calibri or TNR is already digital.

printed documents, images, horribly inaccessible pdfs, horribly inaccessible websites

> Printed documents - Use the original, which is digital.

> Images - Use the original, which is digital.

> horribly inaccessible pdfs - Use the original, which has real text in the PDF

> horribly inaccessible websites - All text on any web site is digital. Nobody uses OCR on a website.

A massive paper producer like the government shouldn't adopt their type setting to people who are using technology wrongly.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#344

Post by Fnoord »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #174

Times 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.

I chuckle at the thought mr. Putin was unable to parse some important US document, complained, and mr. Trump's minion promptly fixed the issue!

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#345

Post by carlosjobim »

denkmoon wrote: post #323
carlosjobim wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serif fonts are easier to read, so now I guess you have to invert your mind as to who is a fascist and who is a liberator?

Ooh ya got me. Not. The problem is not even about which font is actually more accessible. It's the self proclaimed reasoning. Rubio, by his own words, states that the change is about aesthetics and anti DEIA politics. However, if you want to argue about actual accessibility, which is not what is happening in the Dept. of State, the US government's own accessibility guidelines contradict the idea that Serif fonts are…

Should text be made less accessible to read for everybody else, in order to accommodate people with dyslexia? Because everybody who reads a lot prefers serif fonts, since they are easier to read. That's why books are printed in serifs.

Since it's all digital, this all shouldn't be a problem in 2025.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#346

Post by dang »

weinzierl wrote: post #154

Leaders and typefaces: In 1941 Adolf Hitler personally gave order to make the use of the Antiqua mandatory and forbade the use of Fraktur and Schwabacher typefaces. https://ligaturix.de/bormann.htm

(We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46224867. It's fine and interesting, but the offtopicness of you-know-who is a bit too agitating at the top of the thread.)

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#347

Post by sailfast »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #336
wombatpm wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yeah it’s fascist looking as hell, and they’re the ones that have been registering all these rando program domains. So, so dumb - if only because it’s redundant and wasteful.

https://ndstudio.gov/

With such inspiring copy as “What's the biggest brand in the world? If you said Trump, you're not wrong. But what's the foundation of that brand? One that's more globally recognized than practically anything else. It's the nation…where he was born. It's the United States of America.” how can you go wrong?

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#348

Post by contact9879 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #342
contact9879 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

printed documents, images, horribly inaccessible pdfs, horribly inaccessible websites

> Printed documents - Use the original, which is digital. > Images - Use the original, which is digital. > horribly inaccessible pdfs - Use the original, which has real text in the PDF > horribly inaccessible websites - All text on any web site is digital. Nobody uses OCR on a website. A massive paper producer like the government shouldn't adopt their type setting to people who are using technology wrongly.

an example from today (pdf warning): https://www.ntsb.gov/news/Documents/National%20Defense%20Aut...

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#349

Post by contact9879 »

carlosjobim wrote: post #342
contact9879 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

printed documents, images, horribly inaccessible pdfs, horribly inaccessible websites

> Printed documents - Use the original, which is digital. > Images - Use the original, which is digital. > horribly inaccessible pdfs - Use the original, which has real text in the PDF > horribly inaccessible websites - All text on any web site is digital. Nobody uses OCR on a website. A massive paper producer like the government shouldn't adopt their type setting to people who are using technology wrongly.

it's easier to mandate font than to excise all processes within the fed bureaucracy that result in these.

images being digital have no bearing on OCR ability

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#350

Post by nerevarthelame »

blueflow wrote: post #168
papercrane wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons Calibri was selected over Times New Roman was it has a lower rate of OCR transcription errors, making documents using it easier for people using screen readers.

Link on that, as OCR should be more reliable with Times New Roman due to significant serifs.

I don't know what studies Blinken's State Department considered, but here are 2 studies on the matter.

https://www.academia.edu/72263493/Effect_of_Typeface_Design_...: "For Latin, it was observed that individual letters with serif cause misclassification on (b,h), (u,n), (o,n), (o,u)."

https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10220037: [Figure 5 shows higher accuracy for the two sans-serif fonts, Arial and DejaVu compared to Times New Roman, across all OCR engines]

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