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The Culture War on Fonts

In Uncategorized on December 14, 2025 by kmflett

The Culture War on Fonts

You may or may not have missed it but one of Trump’s senior functionaries Marco Rubio has officially banned the use of the Calibri font on the grounds that it is ‘woke’. It is meant to make things easier to read for those who have vision issues. Rubio has reinstated Times New Roman.

Times New Roman was invented in 1932 by Stanley Morison and used by the Times until fairly recent times as it were. The Financial Times (13th December) says Morison was a lifelong ‘marxist and pacifist’, although I suspect only the second of those is correct.

When I was younger (so much younger than today etc) I used comic sans serif a lot, partly because I liked it and partly because it seemed to annoy the font police. Nowadays I’m happy using Times New Roman although of course what you’re reading (or not) here is in Aptos, Word’s font of choice.

‘Beardy’ Howse has a piece in the Telegraph (14th December) arguing that your choice of font suggests what kind of person you are but then declines to indicate what font beard wearers like himself use.

As for Rubio it might be tempting to say he has better things to do, but actually obsessing about fonts keeps him away for a bit from those ‘better things’..

2 Responses to “The Culture War on Fonts”

  1. jonesaginmeols's avatar

    I too have become too old for Comic Sans sadly

  2. gillyflowerblog's avatar

    Wingdings sound par for the course.
    Gill

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