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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

(www.reuters.com)
386 points italophil | 2 comments | 10 Dec 25 00:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.459s | source
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soupfordummies ◴[10 Dec 25 01:10 UTC] No.46212869[source]▶
"[Rubio] ...calling his predecessor Antony Blinken's decision to adopt Calibri a "wasteful" diversity move..."

Bro what. It was the default font in Microsoft for many years thus, it was the default font for most office software for many years -- just like Times New Roman was before.

What.

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QuercusMax ◴[10 Dec 25 01:15 UTC] No.46212911[source]▶
The article says it's better than Times New Roman because it's easier to read for those with disabilities - so of course the government needs to make things worse for them. Wonder if someone could sue over these kinds of changes that are being deliberately made to be less accessible.
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1. wvbdmp ◴[10 Dec 25 01:46 UTC] No.46213102[source]▶
Is that even true? The article is really vague on the type of disability and basically just claims that serifs are harder to read.

Generally sans-serif is advisable for small sizes, although I assume the main things are large open counters, tall x-height and low stroke contrast.

I’ve often read that dyslexics favor strongly distinctive characters and “grounded”, bottom-heavy letterforms. I feel like serifs actually sound pretty good there.

It’s also important to consider whether such studies were conducted before or after high-PPI displays became prevalent and leveled the playing field for serifs.

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2. benterix ◴[10 Dec 25 09:50 UTC] No.46215913[source]▶
The wiki explicitly mension the typical sans disadvantage: "One potential source of confusion in Calibri is a visible homoglyph, a pair of easily confused characters: the lowercase letter L and the uppercase letter i (l and I) of the Latin script are effectively indistinguishable."

So while I prefer Calibri as TNR has been the default for longer and hence is more boring to me, I can understand people might prefer a serif font for readability.