Marco Rubio Makes ‘Times New Roman’ Font Great Again
State Department to end Biden-era ‘diversity and inclusion’ initiative requiring use of Calibri font in official communications.
What’s in a font? Apparently a lot.
Adobe explains when to use serif fonts and when to use sans serif fonts:
“Serifs are the small lines attached to letters. Their origins are a mystery; one theory suggests they arose when scribes using brushes or quills left small marks with the writing implement as they finished each stroke. This evolved into deliberately adding smaller strokes in more regular, artful ways, and those decorative strokes became an expected part of the letters….
Serif fonts can look authoritative, professional, and suggest the weight of history or experience. Serif typefaces like Times New Roman are suggestive of typewriters’ old style — The New York Times and other reputable institutions that have existed for over a century still use this font….
Sans serif typefaces were controversial when they first appeared and were sometimes called “grotesque” typefaces. But when modernist designers like the Bauhaus movement embraced sans serif typefaces, they became associated with cutting-edge design, commerce, and modernism’s attempt to break with the past.”
Times New Roman is a serif font. Calibri is a sans serif font.
Battle of the New Romans 😵💫 pic.twitter.com/YzQl0gwrZS
— Climate Watcher 🔥🇯🇲🇨🇦🇬🇧 (@pmagn) December 10, 2025
Marco Rubio and the State Department have nuked the Biden-era use of Calibri, and have restored Times New Roman to State Department glory.
The NY Times broke the story, Rubio Deletes Calibri as the State Department’s Official Typeface:
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.
In an “Action Request” memo obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Rubio said that switching back to the use of Times New Roman would “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work.” Calibri is “informal” when compared to serif typefaces like Times New Roman, the order said, and “clashes” with the department’s official letterhead.
Apparently the use of Calibri by the Biden administration was part of a DEI initiative (as ridiculous as that sounds):
Mr. Rubio’s directive, under the subject line “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper,” served as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to stamp out remnants of diversity initiatives across the federal government….
Then-Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken ordered the 2023 typeface shift on the recommendation of the State Department’s office of diversity and inclusion, which Mr. Rubio has since abolished. The change was meant to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, such as low vision and dyslexia, and people who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers….
But Mr. Rubio’s order rejected the grounds for the switch. The change, he allowed, “was not among the department’s most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful instances of D.E.I.A.,” the acronym for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. But Mr. Rubio called it a failure by its own standards, saying that “accessibility-based document remediation cases” at the department had not declined.
“Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence,” Mr. Rubio said. He noted that Times New Roman had been the department’s official typeface for nearly 20 years until the 2023 change. (Before 2004, the State Department used Courier New.)
Reuters called it a Font Coup.
Personally, I always go with Times New Roman for legal documents or anything official.
Nature is healing. Times New Roman is great (although personally my favorite font is "Baskerville"). https://t.co/0jCSWaqlhx
— Alberto Miguel Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) December 10, 2025
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Comments
Not Comic Sans?
Serif typefaces are more readable because the serifs draw the eye across the page.
This.
“The change [to Calibri] was meant to improve accessibility for readers with disabilities, such as low vision and dyslexia, and people who use assistive technologies, such as screen readers….”
It’s just wrong to claim that “Calibri is safe and effective.”
It’s long-established canon that serif fonts take less effort to read.
Sans serif fonts are more readable on low res computer monitors. That’s why they exist.
Serif fonts tend to take more space, which is an issue for the phone readers.
Arial is pretty standard for scientific stuff.
My own preference is Times New Roman on my emails and anything else personally generated. The serifs are more readable and, IMO, a bit more classy. And on the phone and Fire, dark mode means slightly better battery life, considerably less glare especially in low light conditions, and improved readability.
But to each his own.
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“But when modernist designers like the Bauhaus movement embraced sans serif typefaces, they became associated with cutting-edge design, commerce, and modernism’s attempt to break with the past.”
I encourage people to read Tom Wolfe’s “From Bauhaus to Our House.” for a critique of the Bauhaus movement which made modern architecture ugly, The movement stems from cultural Marxism: fundamentally an attack on middle class (bourgeois) values and tastes. No wonder Biden’s State Department switched to the ugly Calibri typeface. I find sans serif harder to read besides being ugly. Typefaces I like: Baskerville, Times New Roman, Palatino, Bodoni, Lucida, Bookman, to name a few.
Yet another reason to hate the Biden regime.
LI appears to be using a san-serif font. What should I conclude from that?
Use of serif fonts are a signal of rampant authoritarianism. And according to the Postwar Consensus, authoritarianism was the cause of Nazi Germany.
/sarc (in case you’re sarcasm challenged) But I’m sure some journalist fool will spew something like this.
I could have sworn that the official font of the Biden Administration was dingbats
Or wingdings.
Everything the Biden Administration did was Grotesk.
Just last week, I took a training about communicating with the public in print. It advised the use of sans serif fonts as more readable. First, I don’t believe that’s necessarily true, and second, font selection helps set a tone or to meet a reader’s expectation of a tone (when the reader expects professionalism, for instance).
TNR Is my go-to text for serious writing. I used two fonts on my résumé – TNR for the body and Garamond Premier Pro for the header (name, address, and contact information). A sans serif font doesn’t set the necessary tone for such a document.
Off topic announcement:
I am likely to soon start a new job which will require me to move to a remote location with very limited internet access. So I will soon be dropping out of this and other forums. I don’t know how long this situation will last. I might not last in the job, or internet access in that location might improve. But for now I’m getting ready to say goodbye to you all. I’ll still be around for a few days, but I’m not sure how long, and I’ll be quite busy, so don’t expect to see me around much.
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