Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

I'm really out of the loop on this.

What virtue is being signaled by who?

I know people get real touchy about fonts, but I have a hard time understanding why this is even a news article.

Because politicians are making political choices on fonts rather than leaving those matters to technicians.

Calibri is a Sans Serif font and because it has been the default Microsoft Office font for more than a decade, it is fake email job haver coded (i.e. it appeals to young and middle-aged women who work in HR, this demographic being predominantly Democrat). Times New Roman is a Serif font which looks old and official to cater to boomers and has Roman in it to appeal to Zoomers who want to RETVRN with a V to tradition.

(I didn’t read the article as this is a non-story, but I’m definitely right).

Just guessing from what is written in the article: Calibri once was chosen by the former administration for accessibility reasons. Maybe the virtue signaling being that Calibri isn't great with respect to accessibility (and IMHO wasn't even designed for it in the first place).

Per the State Department in 2023:

https://x.com/John_Hudson/status/1615486871571935232

> fonts like Times New Roman have serifs ("wings" and "feet") or decorative, angular features that can introduce accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities who use Optical Character Recognition technology or screen readers. It can also cause visual recognition issues for individuals with learning disabilities.

> On January 4, 2023, in support of the Department's iCount Campaign on disability inclusion (reftels), Secretary Blinken directed the Department to use a more accessible font. Calibri has no wings and feet and is the default font in Microsoft products and was recommended as an accessibility best practice by the Secretary's Office of Diversity and Inclusion in collaboration with the Executive Secretariat and the Bureau of Global Talent Management's Office of Accessibility and Accommodations.

In 2023, the US State Department signalled how virtuous it was, by moving from the previously-default MS Office font to the then-currently-default MS Office font. The current MS Office default font is Aptos, place your bets on what the State Department is going to switch the font to in 3 years time.

As far as I know, font choice has no zero effect on screen readers, which ask compatible software what words are on screen and read them out. There is evidence that serifs cause visual recognition issues for some individuals, but there's also evidence they aid recognition for different individuals.

It probably helped everyone to choose 14pt Calibri over 12pt Times New Roman, as the font is more legible on LCD screens.

The virtue being signalled by the current administration is that everything their predecessors did was wrong and they're literally going to reverse everything out of sheer pettiness. If anything, they should acknowledge the president's long friendship with Epstein and pick Gill Sans as the default. That would be the ultimate "anti-woke" move I think.

As if anybody would be daft enough to deny that you are of course absolutely right, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/us/politics/rubio-state-d... has this additional detail:

> Mr. Rubio's directive, under the subject line "Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper,"