Secretary of State Marco Rubio waded into the surprisingly fraught politics of typefaces on Tuesday with an order halting the State Department’s official use of Calibri, reversing a 2023 Biden-era directive that Mr. Rubio called a “wasteful” sop to diversity.
While mostly framed as a matter of clarity and formality in presentation, Mr. Rubio’s directive to all diplomatic posts around the world blamed “radical” diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs for what he said was a misguided and ineffective switch from the serif typeface Times New Roman to sans serif Calibri in official department paperwork.
↫ Michael Crowley and Hamed Aleaziz at The New York Times
To clarify things for people who missed the original switch, here’s another excerpt:
I thought serif fonts are supposedly easier to read for longer texts?
guess double tapping boats ain’t getting them the *wins* they are looking for. This one seems solid.
As someone who lives outside the US I don’t recall hearing about the switch to Calibri in 2023.
Hearing about it now, the absurd politicking doesn’t surprise me, but the argument for the original switch does. My understanding is that the evidence suggests little difference in legibility between Serif or Sans Serif typefaces.
This book, which is an excellent read and I found convincing, goes into a lot of detail on the topic:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0
Without wanting to spoil it, the book concludes (page 130):
Microsoft switched the default font in Office to Aptos a couple of years ago. I tend to prefer Times New Roman for documents that are going to be printed.
Yeehaaa! Let’s go!