Name: Calibri.
Age: 19.
Appearance: Woke.
Woke? Who is he/she? It’s not a person. It’s a typeface.
If you say so. You may know it from word processing warning boxes such as: “The font Calibri is missing. Your text might look different.”
I knew I’d heard of it, even if I have no idea what it looks like. It’s a sans-serif typeface designed by Lucas de Groot and first released with the Windows Vista operating system in 2006, along with a bunch of other new fonts beginning with C: Cambria, Candara, Consolas, Corbel. But Calibri subsequently became the default font for Microsoft Office.
Then I guess I do know what it looks like. It’s pretty unassuming, but Calibri is meant to be more readable than some fonts, and cause fewer issues with optical character recognition software.
You said it looked woke. Not me – US secretary of state Marco Rubio.
What’s he got to do with it? Back in 2023, the US state department switched from Times New Roman to Calibri for all its official documents, because Calibri was easier to read for people with certain visual disabilities, and it works better with assistive technologies including text-to-speech screen readers.
Makes sense. But in a department cable this week, Rubio ordered a switch back to Times New Roman.
Why? “To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program,” he wrote.
DEIA? Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility – the four horsemen of wokery, as far as the Trump administration’s concerned.
So a professional and decorous document is one that visually impaired people can’t read? Serif typefaces like Times New Roman are “generally perceived to connote tradition, formality and ceremony”, according to Rubio.
We really are losing the war on stupid. Perhaps you think official Trump administration documents should be printed in Comic Sans.
Comic Sans? The lighthearted comic book speech bubble typeface that proved so popular it ended up in all sorts of inappropriate places – including headstone inscriptions, domestic violence leaflets and second world war memorials.
I think people should use whatever font they like. They all have their uses – designers like Helvetica, publishers like Garamond, Trebuchet is good for digital media.
Is this the first time humble Calibri has made the news? No, it’s long played a role in solving crime and uncovering fraud.
How? Because of the specific year it was first offered – documents have been shown to be forgeries because they were printed in Calibri but dated before Calibri was available.
Do say: “The font Calibri is missing.”
Don’t say: “Sorry, Secretary Rubio – I got your memo, but I couldn’t read it.”
