Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

(www.reuters.com)

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chinathrow ◴[11 Dec 25 07:47 UTC] No.46228736[source]▶

> 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.

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1. mikkupikku ◴[11 Dec 25 11:04 UTC] No.46229932[source]▶

>>46228736 #

How much will it cost to change fonts?

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2. rathole26 ◴[11 Dec 25 12:38 UTC] No.46230656[source]▶

>>46229932 (TP) #

To change tens to hundreds of millions of documents, roughly 50-200M USD.

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3. mikkupikku ◴[11 Dec 25 12:51 UTC] No.46230752[source]▶

>>46230656 #

A dollar a doc? Sounds like a sweet job.

4. corrections ◴[11 Dec 25 12:54 UTC] No.46230784[source]▶

>>46230656 #

It’s only for the department of state though, and the previous cost to change to Calibri was about $145,000 over two fiscal years.

replies(1): >>46231019 #

5. pas ◴[11 Dec 25 13:19 UTC] No.46231019{3}[source]▶

>>46230784 #

that was the cost of additional a11y remediation, likely the direct cost of using a different font/typeface going forward was the time it took for people to read the memo and get used to change the formatting (maybe even set a new default, maybe change templates).

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/full_text_of_marco_rubio_...

of course simply comparing years without a control we have no way of knowing the effect of the change (well, if we were to look at the previous years at least we could see if this 145K difference was somehow significant or not)

replies(1): >>46232719 #

6. sejje ◴[11 Dec 25 15:39 UTC] No.46232719{4}[source]▶

>>46231019 #

Thanks for linking that.

Sadly way more informative than our traditional outlets.

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