US Bans Timed-Honoured Typeface

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1034726.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1034726.htm</a><br /><br /></div>"In a sign that no matter is too small to affect international diplomacy, the US State Department has issued an edict banning its longtime standard typeface from all official correspondence and replacing it with a "more modern" font. <br /><br />In an internal memorandum distributed on Wednesday, the department declared "Courier New 12" - the font and size decreed for US diplomatic documents for years - to be obsolete and unacceptable after February 1."<br /><br />It looks like the <i>new</i> standard font is Times New Roman 14. Yes, that's right 14 point. Just for laughs, I took the last Word document I worked on and converted the Normal style to Times New Roman 14. It went from a 51 page document to a 75 page monster. 8O Are the people in the US State department that blind?? Do we really need to waste paper because some people won't get reading glasses? And further more, who gets paid to decide if a font type is banned? This is your tax dollars hard at work people!

[possmann]

:really mad:
I shouldn't say I can't believe this - but I won't put anything past our Government nowadays. Think of this - they probably hired a consulting company, or at the very least, had a several party committe to sit aournd and view several fonts - got input and buy in from several depatment heads and all - geesh! I betya this decision - the initial decision process - cost at least $100K (thanks guys).

And then the Times New Roman font? I would have chosen Arial - it cleaner and certainly reflects something more modern that Times Roman - how amny times do you read Times Roman on web sites now? It's almost all Arial as this font looks like... Government waaaaay behind the curve again. I'm picturing old ladies with blue hair and tennis shoes making these decisions and influencing their bosses who are wearing bottle-bottom glasses - ergo the ridiculour decision to go 14 for size - What idiot puts any document they are writing in that size? I never even used that in any of my offical documents - it was always 10 or at the most 12.

Geesh guys - get a grip!

[Mike Temporale]

Government waaaaay behind the curve again.

With Courier New being the standard until now, I think this is a gross under statement. :lol:

[Jason Dunn]

Ok, this is just HILARIOUS - Times New Roman 14 point is what a grade five student would use to submit a five page book report when he only wrote three pages and needed to bump up the page count. :lol:

Times New Roman is DEAD baby, dead!

[swbuehler]

It looks like the new standard font is Times New Roman 14. Yes, that's right 14 point. Just for laughs, I took the last Word document I worked on and converted the Normal style to Times New Roman 14. It went from a 51 page document to a 75 page monster. 8O Are the people in the US State department that blind??

The Federal Appeals Courts have required Times Roman 14 for a long time.

swb