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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
why so big? isn't 10 the default standard for most written communication?
ed
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.
Instead of actually doing something useful, they sit around and argue over the right font to use.
And we sit around arguing over their arguments. Which is worse?
It's a jobs program, to help out all of the unemployed fontographers, put out of work by the dot-com bust.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
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.
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.
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.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Sad, but true.
Also, most large corporations have a standard font for official correspondence.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
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.
Wait a second.. are you saying that the government is spending lots of time OCRing their own computer documents??
Now that is a waste of time and money!
When I was in the military we were required to use a font called OCR-A. It was optimised for the OCR readers they had at the time (the late 80's early 90's). I was nearly 100% accurate when OCR'd - pretty good when you consider that we were OCRing text that was being produced by typewriters that had been in near constant use for 20 years.
You can see an example of OCR-a it here.
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...
Times New Roman is owned by Monotype Corporation.
There's a ``gentleman's agreement'' w/ Linotype Corporation which allows them to use / produce ``Times'' (For the backstory on this, look up an article published in the APHA's journal and Walter Tracy's wonderful book _Letters of Credit_).
However, URW did a clone of Times (Nimbus Serif, I believe it's provided as), which they've since made freely available (see the link to this at www.tug.org) and which can be easily used in free systems such as TeX, and is readily installable w/ XFree86 so that one may use it w/ Linux, Gnome, KDE &c.
For those who're curious on the specifics of typeface copyright &c., www.typeright.org is a good starting point.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
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?
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