Secretary of State Marco Rubio has ordered a switch back to Times New Roman from Calibri, undoing a Biden administration move undertaken for accessibility reasons.
In a memo titled “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper,” Mr. Rubio mandated his department return to the typeface used between 2004 and 2023, according to The New York Times. Before 2004, the department used Courier New.
“To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface,” Mr. Rubio wrote, according to Reuters.
Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken ordered a font change in 2023 as part of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts because Calibri is reportedly easier to read for people with certain disabilities than Times New Roman.
Mr. Rubio said that while the font change under Mr. Blinken “was not among the department’s most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful instances of DEIA,” it failed to lower the number of “accessibility-based document remediation cases,” adding that “switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence,” according to The New York Times.
