Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered that State Department documents be set in the Times New Roman font, overturning the policy set by his predecessor, Anthony Blinken, in 2023, to use Calibri.
The memo apparently criticized the previous standard as a wasteful DEIA measure. Much of the press and social media is interpreting this as anti-"woke."
I'm looking at this through my experiences as a typography expert, citing material from my own 2010 article, Why You Don't Use Garamond on the Web, and a book I released in 2011, called Design for Hackers. At the time, the display technology was far different, making it more difficult to read older and subtler seriffed typefaces, such as Times New Roman.
But, times have changed. Calibri was designed around 2002–2004, and display technology was way behind what it is today, such that such fonts that were designed for screens during this time now actually look clunky.
I'm not a usability or accessibility expert and haven't read all the literature on this, but through searches on Google Scholar and a conversation with ChatGPT, I was unable to find any conclusive or even strong evidence for the claim that Calibri is any easier for people with dyslexia or any other disability to read. (I was, however, able to find papers making such claims, while citing and misinterpreting findings of other papers.)
As a typography expert, what stands out to me most about this decision is the irony of the U.S. government making official use of a font designed for an English newspaper.
Works cited, other than my own aforementioned:
Does a specialist typeface affect how fluently children with and without dyslexia process letters, words, and passages? (Joseph, Powell, 2022)
The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy (Wery, Diliberto, 2016)
Further Investigation of the Effects of Font Styles on Perceived Visual Aesthetics of Website Interface Design (Altaboli, 2014)
A Tally of Types, Stanley Morison, 1953
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered that State Department documents be set in the Times New Roman font, overturning the policy set by his predecessor, Anthony Blinken, in 2023, to use Calibri.
The memo apparently criticized the previous standard as a wasteful DEIA measure. Much of the press and social media is interpreting this as anti-"woke."
I'm looking at this through my experiences as a typography expert, citing material from my own 2010 article, Why You Don't Use Garamond on the Web, and a book I released in 2011, called Design for Hackers. At the time, the display technology was far different, making it more difficult to read older and subtler seriffed typefaces, such as Times New Roman.
But, times have changed. Calibri was designed around 2002–2004, and display technology was way behind what it is today, such that such fonts that were designed for screens during this time now actually look clunky.
I'm not a usability or accessibility expert and haven't read all the literature on this, but through searches on Google Scholar and a conversation with ChatGPT, I was unable to find any conclusive or even strong evidence for the claim that Calibri is any easier for people with dyslexia or any other disability to read. (I was, however, able to find papers making such claims, while citing and misinterpreting findings of other papers.)
As a typography expert, what stands out to me most about this decision is the irony of the U.S. government making official use of a font designed for an English newspaper.
Works cited, other than my own aforementioned:
Does a specialist typeface affect how fluently children with and without dyslexia process letters, words, and passages? (Joseph, Powell, 2022)
The effect of a specialized dyslexia font, OpenDyslexic, on reading rate and accuracy (Wery, Diliberto, 2016)
Further Investigation of the Effects of Font Styles on Perceived Visual Aesthetics of Website Interface Design (Altaboli, 2014)
A Tally of Types, Stanley Morison, 1953
