The US State Department is changing the font used for internal documents and it's causing some controversy. The State Department has been using Times New Roman since 2004 but is now switching to Calibri. The change is ostensibly to make it easier for employees using screen readers or who have other perceptual issues that make it hard to read a serif font.
Not everyone is happy.
The change comes as a means to help employees who are visually impaired and was recommended by the secretary’s office of diversity and inclusion. However, the announcement has received criticism and complaints that the Calibri font is not aesthetically pleasing.
One Foreign Service officer told The Post that a water cooler discussion about the font change “took up, like, half the day,” and ranged on both ends of the approval spectrum, while another said, “I’m anticipating an internal revolt.”
Although the change is facing pushback, this is not the first time the State Department has implemented a font change to internal documents. The font was exchanged for Times New Roman in 2004, but at that time had received criticism because it was changed from the Courier New 12 font, otherwise known as the typewriter font.
If they are really concerned about legibility, they should be looking at Atkinson Hyperledgible, which I'm now using as the default font on my browser and on my Kindle. At least they aren't going back to Courier New.
3 comments:
2004 will be about the time we moved from Times New Roman to ..............
Calibri.
For the exact same reasons laid out. I can't believe TNR was chosen in 2004.
I'm surprised that this isn't sparking some sham battle in the sham, so-called culture wars ...
When I was working as a technical writer, I generally used Times New Roman as a body font for printed documents. It's easy to read, everybody had it on their computers (we used Windows), and it's a fairly compact font, which gets more on a page.
For online documents, I used a serif font (usually Arial).
I know people turn up their noses at TNR, but there's a reason it's been around so long.
Post a Comment