The US State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio has canceled the use of Calibri font, reverting to Times New Roman for all official communications. This move undoes a 2023 change aimed at improving accessibility. Rubio frames the decision as a return to tradition amid criticism of diversity initiatives.
The Trump administration's State Department announced a font change in a memo released on Wednesday, titled "Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper." Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed the shift back to the serif font Times New Roman, which he said connotes "tradition, formality and ceremony."
In 2023, under the Biden administration, former Secretary Antony Blinken mandated Calibri, a sans-serif font, to enhance readability on digital screens and accessibility for people with visual disabilities, such as dyslexia. Sans-serif fonts like Calibri lack the serifs—small lines at the ends of letters—that can confuse assistive technologies and cause eyestrain during prolonged reading. This aligned with guidelines like the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the Americans with Disabilities Act, which recommend sans-serif fonts for government websites.
Rubio criticized the Calibri switch as a "wasteful" outcome of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs. He stated, "Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence," calling it informal and clashing with the department's letterhead. A State Department spokesperson emphasized, "Whether for internal memoranda, papers prepared for principals or documents shared externally, consistent formatting strengthens credibility and supports a unified Department identity."
Rubio acknowledged that Calibri "was not among the department’s most illegal, immoral, radical or wasteful instances of D.E.I.A.," but the change reflects the administration's broader anti-DEI stance. The reversion could reduce accessibility for readers with disabilities and increase printing costs, as serif fonts like Times New Roman use more ink—a point highlighted in past research on font efficiency for government documents.
