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US Govt Makes Times New Roman 14 Official Font
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."
There are only three exceptions to the draconian new typographical rules: telegrams, treaty materials prepared by the State Department's legal affairs office and documents drawn up for the president's signature, it said.
As those will all be done in the MS Comic Font.
I had my money on 20 point Dingbat.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Instead of actually doing something useful, they sit around and argue over the right font to use.
Dear God.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
the government declared- thumbtwiddling is now the offical activity to perform when you cannot think of useless directives.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
why so big? isn't 10 the default standard for most written communication?
ed
Not to be petty or anything, but just how slow of a news day does it have to be when a font change is considered newsworthy?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I would think Verdana or Tahoma would be a much better solution. Times New Roman is SOOO Windows 3.1! :)
How appropriate since we are apparently the New Rome .
The word "Oil" is often misintepreted as "Weapons of Mass Destruction" when written in Courier New 12.
Who owns the copyright to Times New Roman? Are there any licensing issues involved in this decision?
US State Department
I guess RTFA is too much to ask on a slow news day.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
That they are going from a fixed-width font (courier) to a variable-width font (Times). Columns of numbers, etc. won't line up as nice with Times, especially if the people creating the documents don't know what they are doing.
No wonder the 5 evil acolytes selected him.
Telegrams?! They still use telegrams? If so, where can I still send one from? I'm sure a telegram to a Senator might get more attention than a letter and certainly more than an email. Plus sending telegrams sounds cool.
--Stephen
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
In related news, the US Government changes the official resolution of all desktops to 640x480, 256 colors.
and yet we still do not have an official language!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
I, for one, welcome our new roman time overlords
From the article: "a 'more modern' font."
I'm sure glad they put "more modern" in quotes, as Times New Roman was introduced in 1932!
-Peter
They should have used an open license font like Bitstream Vera. This would have given them the fixed spaced "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" for tabular data, "Bitstream Vera Serif" for paragraph and "Bitstream Vera Sans" for headers, captions, etc. Simply beautiful and open. :)
So long as they're wasting their time picking out new fonts, they're not writing new laws restricting freedoms, increasing taxes or wasting money on new boondoggle programs.
Believe it or not, Western Union.com. Mind you, it costs fifteen bucks. But it definitely makes an impact.
A lot of big organizations make decisions like this. The State Dep't wants documents coming from it to have a similar look and feel. Just consider it a social CSS.
I subcontracted for State for a while, and this is actually a step in the right direction. They have 2 print shops, one for GS and one for FS, and people have lately been printing some really stupid looking reports and circulars. It's kind of a shame that they chose 14 pt TNR, since that pretty much keeps you from being able to make a small, glossy report like people like nowadays, but some consistency would be a good thing.
Also, this only seems to apply to printed materials. Electronic publications can stay in whatever font you want, which is good since I hate seriffed fonts on a screen.
All's true that is mistrusted
In other news, students around the country rejoice. Now, they can use US Governement official font to turn a two page paper into three pages.
Not to mention the vast amount of disk space that would be saved by using a smaller font!
Actually, the typically available Times New Roman has lining figures which are an ``en-space'' wide.
If one types _just_ numbers things line up as if one were using a monospaced font. The problem is the default space (I checked TimesNewRomanPS YMMV w/ other versions) is half an en-space, so that even if one sets up the typesetting to not vary the space, one has to double up on the spaces. Naturally, people should just use tabs properly, but.....
Microsoft has focused their OpenType work on linguistics, not typesetting capabilities, so the above should hold even for Windows 2000 and later (naturally it doesn't hold if someone is using Adobe InDesign and sets the option for old-style figures and proportional numbers).
For those who're curious, I touch on some of this sort of thing in some of my didactic typography samples available from my website URL.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
They chose the Times New Roman typeface at 14 point, consisting of the fonts regular, italic, bold and bold italic.
A typeface could technically be a font if you only have one version of that typeface = the one font in it.
moving from a fixed width/monospaced font to a variable spaced font will make it more difficult for simpler forms of communication to interface officially with government entities.
increasing complexity typically reduces reliability.
Same place one has always gone, Western Union &c.
The problem is, the service is so little in demand in the US that when one sends it, they phone the message in initially, then send the printed copy by mail --- not quite the same effect. YMMV in other countries where the telecommunications system isn't so saturating.
William
(who convinced his brother-in-law to spend a small fortune to send the traditional congratulatory telegram to his father-in-law --- at least he kept it)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Seems a little obsolescent.
;)
Or even obsolete!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Serif fonts have been found to be more readable in printed material.
I can think of something you can send your Congresscritter from WesternUnion.com that would have almost certainly have a greater impact than a telegram.
Convenient that it lets you send both!
The enemies of Democracy are
Dear Senator. STOP.
Please consider the following things that should be changed. STOP.
-The RIAA. STOP.
-Microsoft. STOP.
-The war in Iraq. STOP.
-The Patriot Act. STOP. No, stop. STOP. I mean seriously, stop it now. STOP.
--Chag
...the department of homeland security recently adopted Zapf Dingbats as its official font.
Should clear up their communiques a bit.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Times New Roman instead Garamond? What were those aesthetically clueless dingbats thinking?
That's it. I've completely lost faith in our government, and political processes in general. If they can't ascertain Garamond's clear superiority to TNR, well, they'll just have to impeached, that's all.
And sent for serious rehabilitation. And re-training, with those methods used for de-programming cult victims.
I mean, seriously, TNR over Garamond? I ask you...
See here's the problem. 10 point at 96 DPI and 10 point at 72 DPI *SHOULD* be the same thing, point does *NOT* equal pixel, that's a common fallicy propogated by Microsoft. Points are Points, there are 72 of them in an inch. Points are NOT pixels!
So to answer your question. No, 12 point is the accepted standard for most communication. Unfortunately since the majority of computers in the world render points incorrectly '10 point' has become a defacto, and typographically incorrect, standard.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
This is the State Department. You know, embassies and stuff? Telegrams are a good basic, fast, communication system.
A diplomat may be at the mercy of the local communication system, and I know of countries where modems are outlawed. (They mess up the cheap bugs the local law enforcement has on all the phones. Not that the phones work...) If you need something to go faster than a letter, a telegram may be your only choice.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
"I want to make it perfectly clear to every one in the world that just because I'm shortsighted does not mean that I can afford not to be misudnerstood."
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
No more ASCII art in official US government memos.
A fixed width font like courier (new) is horrible to read when printed on paper. It's great for code or such things, not for actual documents.
A font like Times New Roman was developped specifically for newspapers. It has a serif, which improves readabilty by guiding your eyes acros the lines. It has a relatively high size of such letters as a,e,o,m,n when compared to l,k,j,g. (Sorry I'm not familiar with the correct terms in english) This is done to effectively enlarge the appearance and thus readability. It has large thick vs. thin contrasts. All this is done to improve readabilty in a newspaper: narrow collumn width, small size.
It is even designed to compensate (or use) the effect of overprint: a small amount of ink allways flows out, making the thinnest parts of characters less thin.
When printed on a laserprinter, the font actually becomes a bit to contrast rich in thick/thin, because of the lack of overprint.
Times New Roman is far from the best choice in my opinion. It's outdated (not really suitable for laserprinting). It's not meant to be used as 13 pt font in documents with long lines.
A lot of people underestimate or are even completely ignorant to the influence of document layout: font, size, pagemargins. If you value the readability it's worth it to invest some time in the subject.
-- Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
BTW, as others have pointed out, this is not a government-wide standard, just a State Department one.
Is that all US government reports now have to have to be accompanied by "the correct cover sheet". Oh, and all White House press conferences must have at least "fifteen pieces of flair".
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"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!
i could live a little longer in this prison
Today the U.S. Government has issued these equally important directives:
1) All federal employees must tie their shoelaces using a right-over-left Ian knot.
2) Handwritten ampersands must be of the official '&' variety and not the 'sloppy plus' variety.
3) Toilet paper must be folded, not crumpled.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The 20 point dingbat is actually running the country, so maybe you should collect on your bet.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
What about the official font for college freshmen? TNR 14-point is fine when you sort of know something about the topic of the paper you're writing, but TNR 20-point will happily fill the 3-page requirement of the paper.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
In 12pt Courier New, War Was Beginning...
What happen!!
Someone set us up the Times!!
What!!
We get bigger!!
New Font Turn on!!
It's Huge!!
How are you gentlemen!!
All your document are belong to us!!
You have no chance to survive, make your change!!
Join the Free Software Foundation
(and before I get trolled: no, I can't correct it with glasses)
I have had problems reading small font text for at least 10 years now, and the problem is, of course, getting worse. But I have learned a lot, about the needs of visually impaired people. One of these things is that Verdana is probably the ideal font for us. This fact was discussed in depth on the nystagmus newsgroup, and the good thing is, we all reached a consensus about Verdana.
I am surprised so few companies use it. Actually, none as far as I know. I am surprised mostly because I believe that a nice, readable font is pleasant even for the healthy eye, it's more ergonomic.
Sigged!
I always said governments were blind and this futher proves it. I could read Times New Roman 14 from space.
Isn't [Wingdings] the crypto that SCO used in their code comparisons?
No, that was Symbol, which any bilingual English/Greek speaker can read fluently. So now, under the DMCA and Patriot Act, are all residents of Greece who know English "terrorists"?
Except in the case of a mixture of text and numbers. A lot of people don't use tab at all, let alone properly, and just space over.
Font selection and standardization is a big deal. People read through the process of pattern recognition. Using standard fonts substantially increases the speed at which people read and their comprehension of what they read.
Times New Roman is not a Microsoft v. the world thing. The font was developed by The Times in 1932. It is a relatively compact font. It was used by papers as they were able to get a large number of words per page and was easy to read.
A standardized font improves quality. It makes documents uniform, etc..
Microsoft included Times New Roman because it was a common, standardized font, not the other way around.
I find this interesting.
Ask anyone in the publishing industry, and chances are they will tell you that the most readable font available is Courier (in any standard variety) 12pt Regular.
I.e., precisely the font they are moving away from, on the grounds of readability.
I wonder if the person who made this choice is someone who has to read a lot of documents, or just somebody who thinks a proportional font looks nicer?
Actually, no, a point isn't / wasn't always 1/72nd of an inch.
That was set by John Warnock (you may know him better as the founder of Adobe Systems) when he wrote a little program called PostScript. He chose to do this for efficiency's sake since he knew all fonts would have to be re-created for use in his system.
Prior to that there were two different types of points, English points (72.27 to an inch) and Cicero / Didot points (some funny number to a meter).
So, when one specs points in publishing, one should always ascertain whether one means the DTP point (72 to an inch), or Printer's points or something else.
The original Mac OS set the screen dpi to be 72 pixels per inch, but Apple hasn't made a screen which matches that for a long while AFAIK. Windows sets the default logical screen dpi to 96 by default, but allows one to change it. Unfortunately a lot of programs are Mac ports which are hard-wired to 72 dpi, so it's actually better to set to that.
For those who need more on this, I'd suggest www.schaedler-rulers.com --- also look up Victor Eijkhout's spiffy TeX ruler (should be on CTAN).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
10 posts on Monday, 4 so far today... You work? I want your job...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
In any case, there are more visually pleasing fonts, and I see no reason why official documents should not look good. Some organisations use their own custom font, I would have thought that the US government could afford to pay for a real expert to come up with a good one, which might also be more readable by the visually challenged.
Nice history on Times Roman and Times New Roman here
Alex
Heisenberg may have been here
"US bans time-honored typeface"
What the heck?
1: The memo only applies to standardizing internal documentation for one department.
2: Courier is "time-honored" only in that it was the ubiquitous typeface for single-font devices like typewriters and ascii printers, as well as degrading nicely to dot matrix. Monospace is a pain to read in extended printed documents.
3: The article calls the new rules draconian, in spite of the fact that previously, Courier New 12 was mandated for all official documents!
You're all missing the point here - Linux as I see it doesn't have the exact font "Times New Roman" as part of the default install - (at least OpenOffice 1.1 on Fedora Core 1 shows now Times Roman font...)
So, what does this edict from the government mean for Linux desktop adoption in the Government?
And just think of the endless committees, sub-committees, working groups, focus groups, font lobbyists, R and D, marketing and strategising people that were involved. There were probably millions spent on deciding whether they should go for the relaxed 12 point, or the more dynamic and assertive 'hell we're a superpower' 14 point approach.
I hear they're working on rebranding the bald eagle for the 21st Century, apparently the existing bird just isn't - well - [makes feeble hand gestures] swooping enough for today's time-poor, internet-rich, xboxed, click-to-continue, frappacino generation.
Best wishes,
Mike.
If you'll RTFA, you'll find "The new font 'takes up almost exactly the same area on the page as Courier New 12, while offering a crisper, cleaner, more modern look'". In fact, it takes slightly less paper, and anyone with half a brain can tell you it's a lot more readable. Add to that that it comes standard with Windows, and there's really no argument against it.
I'd expect Times 14 to put about as much text as Courier 12 on the same page: Courier is monospace, while Times is quite compact.
Of course, I was hoping for a nice font; calson, newspaper gothic, or somesuch. Or my personal favorite: bembo.
I think fonts are some of the most important and pervasive branding statements you can make: think of apple and their use of garamond condensed.
Well, I guess it is only appropriate that the government waited until the 21st century to abandon a typeface meant to look like a typewriter, in favor of a typeface that is almost synonymous with Microsoft Word.
The choice of 14-point type, too, is interesting: the standard is usually 12 points, but I guess the point size increase is meant to appeal to baby boomers' aging eyes.
For my money, I would have preferred a slightly less stuffy serifed face, like Bembo, or even Goudy. No less official-looking, but rounder and more accessible.
OK, I'd actually have preferred something even more modern, like a sans-serif font such as the emininently readable Gill Sans, but that would be asking too much of the Fed.
See, it all makes sense now! "New Times Roman".
"New Times" == "Changing Times" == "New World Order"
And what kind of "Order"? Roman law, the law of Empire, the end of the Republic, the... the...
Well, at least they didn't choose Comic Sans. I'd hate to think what kind of world that font would be ushering in.
Read, L
Test it out, loud mouth.
Open a new Word (or other word processor of choice) document and paste in multiple pages of text and format it all as Courier New 12 pt. Print it out.
Now convert it all to Times New Roman 14 pt and print it out. How many pages compared to Courier? The same or less, I'll bet you find.
Courier New is a monospaced font, you can fit a fixed number of characters per line, whether they are all i's or m's.
Times New Roman is properly kerned so that you can fit more characters per line as each character takes up only as much space as it needs.
It sounds like 14 pt would take up more space, and if you stay within one typestyle you would be correct, but Courier New is not space efficient so you actually do gain back more space and make it easier to read large blocks of text.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
You're thinking of onscreen use, where you are absolutely right, due to poor screen resolution. I still cannot figure out why web browsers *still* ship by default displaying many fonts as serif by default. It's simply stupid in terms ofusability.
From what I can tell from other analysis here, the new rule applies to printed documents, where serif fonts really are easier to read for large chunks of text.
May we never see th
Too justify their jobs and the amount of work they do, beaurocrats can probably increase the font to 15 point without much notice. This makes the document longer, ensuring job security by showing how much work they do. Consultants, pay attention here! You can make more money, with less work.
What high school, college or university student hasn't heard of this trick before?
16 point "Spooky" font
Naa... it's all in 14-point NSA Redacted Font, with random unredacted words just to peak your curiousity.
We have XXXX XXX alert X XXXX a XXXXXXXX XXX Laden XXXXXXX XX transgendered XXX XXXXX X to XXXXX XXX XXXX giraffes. Advise XXX XXXXX XX XXXXXX the XXXXX XXXX and XXXXXXXX.
My mind goes numb just thinking of a conference room full of Gov't types arguing the merits of their "pet" fonts.
Be bringing the BIG coffee cup to that one.
"..... and next Bob will be doing a PowerPoint presentation on the exciting history of Lucinda 12, go ahead Bob......"
[head smacks table]
> there are more visually pleasing fonts, and I see no reason
> why official documents should not look good.
Yes, there are more pleasing fonts, but don't let untalented people come any where close to them. Give them Times New Roman and delete all the other fonts from their computers.
At my company, Futura is our corporate branded sans serif, with New Century Schoolbook used for serif work. However, only about 10% of the corporate population can deal with this. We've got people who produce hundreds of pages of Futura text (where its sans serif nature makes the document an eyestrain to read). We've got people who can't tell the difference between Futura, MS Comic Sans, and Arial. We've got people who will mix Futura and Times New Roman in the same freaking sentence. I once saw a marketing person (who should have known better) try to use Zapf Chancery (an abomination) in all caps all over a presentation for a trade show, before he was smacked upside the head.
I can't imagine our Federal government is any better. So, if settling on Times New Roman is the way to prevent font atrocities, then so be it.
Sheesh. The only way I can keep from exploding like this at work is to read Kibo's pages on this.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
If Steve Jobs was President is would've been chicago.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Now, I truly lament for all of the government employed ASCII artists who will no longer have a fixed-width font to work with.
Come play Moral Decay!
I think you just realized the real motive. The ink lobby has "donated to the president". Everyone knows how expensive ink cartridges are(or laser). Open Open Office (pun intended) and type something. You will see that the end number of pages is the same, but that Times New Roman 14 uses wider parts of letters (total width same including spacing). You will need to open it up to see what I mean. This will cost the governement millions paying for these extra cartridges. Fear the Ink Lobby!
Mod Wisely.
Now why did I go and enroll for a Masters program next fall again?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
And for classified documents, Wingdings.
Sorry.
From what I heard, the serifs are meant to lead your eyes along the text.
People with dyslexia find the letters in words get jumbled up, so anything that serves to seperate the letters is of help. Hence the preference for sans serif.
An administrative office in the US gov't decided to use a different font. Not only is this not news, but for them to frame it as "US Bans old font" is downright misleading and dispicable. Pretty much every office I've ever worked for has had a standard font. The Dept. of State decided to change fonts--and to a much more eye-pleasing one, I might add. Nobody is going to jail for using Courier Font in the USA. Not even a fine. This is basically just a "TPS Report" saying how they're gonna do the cover sheets from now on... new font. No big fucking deal. The USA has not banned any fonts. If you work for the Dept of State, start using Times new Roman. Shoulda been using it years ago anyway. Of course, if the title of the story had been "State Department Chooses New Font" the editors would have laughed the reporter out of the office... so it had to be more dramatic. "US bans..." ... yeh we've banned lots of stupid things that shouldn't be banned, but fonts are not yet one of them.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I fFind it easier to read, easier to visually digest, easier to scan through and attain the main ideas presented by the text;
There's always the same number of characters, and therefore words. the even spacing of courier makes all text organized in even columns, which enables it's length of material to be judged quickly.
Courier (monospaced) fFonts are handy because tables can be built easily, fForms can be written simply. it's very easy to determine how much space is required when you know how many letters are expected.
Machines like monospacing because it is very easy to differentiate letters which have a tendency to look alike. OCR happens easier, fFax machines tend not to blur as much.
Transcribers and archivists like monospacing because it is very easy to read quickly. similar reasons already presented, it is easy to quickly scan, read, and differintiate. (i call out this item in specific because government is riddled with transcribers and archivists)
Courier is easier to read on an elementary level. remember, government is fFor everyone. disabled, poor vision, low literacy, young and old, all people must be able to read the documents in question.
so I use the same font. It's freaking HUGE.
But maybe GWB and company will notice when they say "this intelligence is unreliable".
The revolution will NOT be televised.