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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

reuters.com

611–620 of 738 posts

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

#611

> U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters. What a waste of government time and spending.

The levels of pettiness in this administration know no bounds. I'm sure they'll forbid the use of "woke", and require all government employees to say "I terminated sleep this morning".

What an odd take. Every administration does this sort of petty stuff. nothing new under the sun.

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

#612

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: 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…

I bet they want to get rid of Calibri because it was designed by a Dutch person. There's only two things I hate in this world, people who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch. (disclaimer: I am Dutch).

> (disclaimer: I am Dutch).

Well then I suppose it’s only appropriate to say: Goede fhtagn

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

#613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol he's not reading printouts.

Funny how they make this joke about Trump when biden got caught on camera using cue cards and having reporters questions and headshots on a cheat sheet...

But it's not a joke. We've had a decade of reports with insiders indicating he doesn't read daily briefings. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-looks-at-charts-in-int...

Can he read? No doubt he can read some. I can't say he's illiterate. But functionally, he's nowhere near the reading and comprehension skills of what we should expect from a national leader.

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

#614

Which Times does Rubio want: There's a NY version, and a Chicago version. 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.…

Are you saying there are multiple fonts named "Times New Roman"? I can't seem to find any reference to this online.

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

#615
post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"wasteful diversity move" Wild. I'm curious now if someone has an ordered list of fonts from the gayest to the straightest.

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> if a person is visually impaired, why wouldn't they have tools at their disposal to make things readable?

If it's on a screen in a browser, probably. If it's printed, or on a display not under a reader's control, probably not.

FWIW, I'm partially split. I generally prefer sans-serif overall - have for decades. I think I slightly prefer serif for some printed material visually, but... when I actually have to engage and read it, for long periods, I think I tend to opt for sans-serif. Noticed this on my kindle years ago, and kindle reader now - I usually swap to sans-serif options (I think it's been my default for a while).

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

#616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the title of this and as I could not wrap my head around the idea of "Rubio" here actually meaning Marco Rubio, I assumed this was a font name, but also laughing to myself just how hilariously absurd it would be for the Secretary of State to involved in picking fonts...only to click the link and discover that yes, it is exactly that absurd.

Did you have that kind of reaction, that it’s absurd, when Blinken ordered the use of Calibri after ~20 years of consistent use of Times New Roman? It is objectively more concerning and “absurd”, regardless of “team”, that Blinken arbitrarily introduced fragmentation by adding an additional font to official government communications when a convention had been established across government to use Times New Roman.

You seem weirdly worked up over this.

Blinken made no public statements on this until he was asked about it. He did not come out and say for example, "For too long, the vision impaired community have been discriminated against by the systemic bias via the use of Times New Roman. Today we are taking action to change this and restore the dignity of those this font has long oppressed", but Rubio just did exactly this. For all I can tell the actual decision was a recommendation made by an internal team doing an accessibility review.

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

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)" What you actually want to compare speed in the most preferred font to, to show that individual choice is or is not…

A meaningful testing of the differences between fonts is greatly complicated by the effect of the familiarity with the tested fonts. The differences between individuals which perform better with different fonts may have nothing to do with the intrinsic qualities of the fonts but may be determined only by the previous experience of the tested subjects with the tested fonts or with other fonts that are very similar to…

I have written the above posting before reading the complete research paper linked by the previous poster.

After reading the complete paper, I have seen that the study is much worse than I had supposed based on its abstract.

This study is typical for the font legibility studies made by people without knowledge about typography. I find annoying that such studies are very frequent. Whoever wants to make such a study should consult some specialist before doing another useless study.

The authors claim that a positive feature of their study is the great diversity of fonts that they have tested: 16 fonts.

This claim is very false. All their fonts are just very minor variations derived from 4 or 5 basic types and even those basic types have only few relevant differences from Times New Roman and Arial.

All their fonts do not include any valuable innovation in typeface design made after WWII, and most fonts do not include any valuable innovation made after WWI. They include a geometric sans serif, which is a kind of typeface created after WWI, but this kind of typefaces is intended for packaging and advertising, not for bulk text, so its inclusion has little importance for a legibility test.

I would classify all their 16 typefaces as "typefaces that suck badly" from the PoV of legibility and I would never use any of them in my documents.

Obviously, other people may not agree with my opinion, but they should be first exposed to more varied kinds of typefaces, before forming an opinion about what they prefer, and not only to the low-diversity typefaces bundled with Windows.

After WWII, even if the (bad in my opinion) sans-serif typefaces similar to Helvetica/Arial have remained the most widespread, which have too simplified letter shapes, so that many letters are ambiguous, there have appeared also other kinds of sans-serif typefaces, which combine some of the features of older sans-serif typefaces with some of the features of serif typefaces.

In my opinion, such hybrid typefaces (e.g. Palatino Sans, Optima Nova, FF Meta, TheSans, Trajan Sans) are better than both the classic serif typefaces and the classic sans-serif typefaces.

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

#618

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: 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…

I bet they want to get rid of Calibri because it was designed by a Dutch person. There's only two things I hate in this world, people who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch. (disclaimer: I am Dutch).

[deleted]

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

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruelty is the point

Font changes are cruel?

They can be if a font is chosen due to it being easier to read for some people and then it's reverted so that those people will then struggle to read. It's akin to removing ramps from shops to make it awkward for those in wheelchairs.

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

#620
post #608
post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer cruelty signaling, because there is profound difference between the impact of the two on the world. Insisting on naming things so that "bad thing" and "good thing" are undistinguishable is not neutral, it is biased and favors bad actors.

[flagged]

Can you be specific about when this has happened?
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