The Trump administration's State Department, headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, released a memo on Wednesday with bad news for phone users and those with visual disabilities. It will rescind the switch to the font Calibri for official communications, replacing it with the previous font, Times New Roman.
The change may seem like a minor move, but it could have significant ramifications for government documents, which outline American responses to both national and international events, and are read worldwide.
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Calibri became the agency's official font in 2023, as it is considered to be a more readable typeface on digital screens. The decision to shift away from using Calibri could be a literal headache for some readers -- which might be the reason you probably don't use Times New Roman anymore at work, either.
Rubio's directive, "Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper," said Times New Roman connotes "tradition, formality and ceremony."
A State Department spokesperson told CNET: "Whether for internal memoranda, papers prepared for principals or documents shared externally, consistent formatting strengthens credibility and supports a unified Department identity."
Rubio explicitly blamed diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs for what he said was a "wasteful" move to use Calibri. Following the announcement, headlines characterized the move as the latest salvo in the administration's war on "woke."
Why Calibri?
Calibri is an important font for everyone's eyes.
Under the Biden administration, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the move to mandate Calibri font, the same sans-serif typeface that became Microsoft's default font back in 2007. The motivation was to improve accessibility and readability.
While Times New Roman is pretty (and popular), its serifs -- those extra bits at the edges -- make it harder to read, especially for people with a range of visual disabilities, such as dyslexia.
That's why guidelines like the globally used Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommend using sans-serif fonts, which don't have confusing elements that resemble wings and feet. Sans-serif fonts, such as Calibri, are easier to read on smaller screens like phones and laptops, and are less likely to cause eyestrain when viewing documents for extended periods.
Calibri is also a font that is comfortably familiar to most office workers. Before transitioning to Aptos, a simpler font, Microsoft Office had used Calibri as its standard font for 17 years.
The new State Department instruction also goes against federal recommendations from the Americans with Disabilities Act, currently found here, which still mandates sans-serif fonts for accessible text on government websites.
What will it cost to go back to Times New Roman?
Fancy fonts come with hidden costs.
It's not every day that fonts become a source of controversy -- at least not in the realm of politics.
The change back to Times New Roman could likely result in a reduction in accessibility (at least when it comes to official State Department communications). It could even make things expensive. Back in 2014, CNET covered research by an ambitious sixth-grader named Suvir Mirchandani, who discovered that fonts with tiny serifs use up a lot of extra ink.
Since the government tends to print many of its documents worldwide, switching to a clean font could have saved the federal government millions of dollars a year in ink expenses. Though we can't confirm how much cheaper it was for the State Department to use Calibri, it's clear that one short memo could cost the government in more ways than one.