When I first encountered this New York Times headline on a scroll through X, I didn’t think it was real: “At State Dept., a Typeface Falls Victim in the War Against Woke.” Surely the subheading proved this was an artful joke? “Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Biden-era move to the sans serif typeface ‘wasteful,’ casting the return to Times New Roman as part of a push to stamp out diversity efforts.”
But if it was a joke, was it mocking Rubio? The woke Bidenistas? The New York Times itself?
It was real. Rubio has indeed jettisoned the Calibri font, decreed for use in the State Department’s formal communications by his predecessor, Antony Blinken, and has reinstated Times New Roman. With a memo titled “Return to Tradition,” Rubio is getting the serif band back together.
Calibri, a sans serif font (plain, wholesome, without flourishes), is said to be easier to read; it thus scratched the Biden administration’s itch for the A in DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility). Times New Roman is a serif font (slightly more patrician but still highly readable). Rubio said that its readoption would “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work.”
As far as Blinken’s accessibility rationale goes, Rubio said that “switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence.”
I am not a neutral observer here. When a writer files a piece in any font other than Times New Roman, that’s a problem I fix instantly. A document in Helvetica or Arial is one I can’t (okay, won’t) read. Just the other day, a writer on staff who shall remain nameless sent me a Word file in Calibri. That was an emergency control + A situation.
Foreign policy aside, in restoring Times New Roman to the State Department, Rubio is what I’d call a font of wisdom.