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US Govt Makes Times New Roman 14 Official Font

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the curse-the-wretched-serif dept.

pollux03 writes "According to ABC news, '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. "In response to many requests and with a view to making our written work easier to read, we are moving to a new standard font: 'Times New Roman 14'," said the memorandum. ' The report goes on to cite a few exceptions to the rule including official telegraphs."

4 of 811 comments (clear)

  1. 14 point? by ed.han · · Score: 5, Interesting

    why so big? isn't 10 the default standard for most written communication?

    ed

  2. Re:Yeah, nice use of taxdollars. by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The government uses a lot of OCR - more than you would believe. Standardizing on one exact font description makes it far easier to build an OCR engine optimized for speed and accuracy, which in turn saves time and taxpayer dollars. It doesn't seem that unreasonable.

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    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
  3. Re:Yeah, nice use of taxdollars. by kippy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This was a memo, not a $3 million case study. Don't overreact just because it has to do with the government. I'll bet you anything this cost about an hour of someone's time and the cost of emailing their workers and handing out some paper copies.

    If you want to start bitching about where your tax money is going, do some research first.

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    Blaze a trail to the New World
  4. i was ahead of my time, when i worked for DoD!! by pezpunk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "In response to many requests and with a view to making our written work easier to read, we are moving to a new standard font: 'Times New Roman 14'," said the memorandum.

    this is pretty amazing. back 13 years ago in 1991 i was working for the Army Materiel Command Headquarters and i repeatedly got a "talking to" from my bosses for using Times instead of Courier in official correspondence to other departments. i then went to the head of AMC HQ and suggested a change in policy to allow Times New Roman to also be acceptable, since we were now in the computer age, and not limited to typewriters and daisy-wheel printers, and since Times New Roman was demonstrably easier to read, and more attractive. He took my request to the Chief of Staff of the Army, who shot it down.

    i was ahead of my time!

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    i could live a little longer in this prison