Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
https://twitter.com/john_hudson/status/1615486867712999426
266 comments
Calibri is Microsoft-encumbered, no? Shame they didn't use a free font like Liberation Sans.
Liberation Sans would be so on brand for the USA too
Mot à mot translation: "Liberation Without" or "Liberation Lacking"
Arguably this fits even better.
You know that feeling you get when something is just so perfect?
Not for the bureaucrats at the state department.
The Microsoft empire is bigger than several nation states.
IBM research used to examine UX. The IBM top brass deciding to pay over $35B+ for a UNIX-like when they have an authentic UNIX of their very own which is going to a boneyard in India suggests that kind of UX research isn't front of mind and funded to decide which font is best.
IBM research used to examine UX. The IBM top brass deciding to pay over $35B+ for a UNIX-like when they have an authentic UNIX of their very own which is going to a boneyard in India suggests that kind of UX research isn't front of mind and funded to decide which font is best.
Buying Red Hat was just to acquire customers . Generally if you don’t really want the product the business / tech then you acquire patents , customers and people. For patents you can sue other competitors.
What does AIX have to do with this? It wasn't exactly at the forefront of UX research even before Red Hat existed at all.
What you see as "Microsoft-encumbered," they may see as "default font in Outlook so just go with the font that'll get used anyway."
They'd have to install that font to every machine, and Calibri is already there.
Microsoft is a domestic company. That's probably a plus for vendor selection.
Eh, better to name the free fonts something that doesn't give an "I can't afford the name brand" vibe. Nothing about freedom even needs to be in the name. To most people, all fonts are already free cause they cost nothing.
Interesting that the memo claims that sans serif fonts are preferred to serif fonts for screen reader users and people with disabilities. I thought the exact opposite was true. Is there any definitive research on which type of font is more accessible?
"Results showed a small, but significant advantage in response times for words written in a sans serif font."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20445911.2011.5...
"Sans serif, monospaced and roman font styles significantly improved the reading performance over serif, proportional and italic fonts."
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2513383.2513447
and here a whole book about that question
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/53344
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20445911.2011.5...
"Sans serif, monospaced and roman font styles significantly improved the reading performance over serif, proportional and italic fonts."
https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2513383.2513447
and here a whole book about that question
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/53344
Isn't 'small but significant' quite ironic.
Fascinating, thank you
That last link (the book) is a fantastic literature review, but every chapter basically concludes that despite some results going each way, there is no statistically significant readability difference between sans serif and serif typefaces, whether on paper or on screen, or whether the reader has various disabilities.
I had a laugh about that.
Dyslexia associations have recommended Comic Sans as a font that allows for easier reading comprehension. Experts say that opposition to Comic Sans is ableist: https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/the-reason-comic-sans-is-a-pu...
I, for one, think all State Dept cables should henceforth be transmitted in Comic Sans, so as to provide maximum accessibility.
I, for one, think all State Dept cables should henceforth be transmitted in Comic Sans, so as to provide maximum accessibility.
While I really hope the claim that hating on Comic Sans being ableist is facetious, I do kinda like the font, and use Fantasque Sans[^1] in my terminal.
[^1]: https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
[^1]: https://github.com/belluzj/fantasque-sans
I use Comic Mono and Comic Sans as my system monospace and regular fonts, respectively. If nothing else, it makes reading LinkedIn a lot more fun. And to be quite honest it's nice to read in general.
“Disabilities” is an extremely wide spectrum, and it’s pointless to try to group people on that scale.
Let me introduce a term to your venacular that will serve you well: 508 compliance.
Not sure I get your point?
[1] Disabilities may be broad, but it is incumbent upon our profession(s) to be inclusive.
[2] It is not pointless to work towards including folks who have a disability. More people than you realize have a form of disability. Ensuring our services and products are accessible is important, whether considered under a legal or an ethical lens.
[2] It is not pointless to work towards including folks who have a disability. More people than you realize have a form of disability. Ensuring our services and products are accessible is important, whether considered under a legal or an ethical lens.
Right yes, agreed with all of that (I’ve been doing we accessibility for over two decades now), I just didn’t get what a US public sector code had to do with my point.
> “Disabilities” is an extremely wide spectrum, and it’s pointless to try to group people on that scale.
Ignoring groupings of people who fall under the Disabilities umbrella often can result in lawsuits.
Ignoring groupings of people who fall under the Disabilities umbrella often can result in lawsuits.
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Am I being thick, or does a screen reader not care what the font is?
I wouldn't expect it would make a difference either, but the memo made this claim
One of our employees is blind, and screen readers (JAWS is what he uses) can be fairly finicky. For a case where you are looking at or editing the document in MS Word it doesn't matter, since if the text is readily accessible it will ignore the font. However, in something like a pdf or image it needs to OCR the text, and certain fonts are easier to read.
I happen to know this because we ended up needing to rework our training documentation, which we supply as pdfs that were exported from Word. The screen reader needs to figure out the order of the text in the pdf, and by default word can end up exporting the text laid out in a way that causes the screen reader to parse the text out of order. There are accessibility options that can resolve this, but we ended up changing the font since that resolved the problem without needing to ensure the correct options were set everytime someone needs to update the training manuals.
I happen to know this because we ended up needing to rework our training documentation, which we supply as pdfs that were exported from Word. The screen reader needs to figure out the order of the text in the pdf, and by default word can end up exporting the text laid out in a way that causes the screen reader to parse the text out of order. There are accessibility options that can resolve this, but we ended up changing the font since that resolved the problem without needing to ensure the correct options were set everytime someone needs to update the training manuals.
There are PDF's to embed OCR info on it.
The issue is with OCR. Imagine something that was printed(for being physically signed or filed into a cabinet, for example) and rescanned into an image or PDF.
Both printing and scanning is lossy with lots of noise and artifacts.
The article is saying that serif fonts are harder to OCR.
For example, something like this https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/6945...
For example, something like this https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/6945...
Sans serif fonts are preferable only on low-resolution displays (this includes 1080p) or at small point sizes, because in this cases the good serif fonts cannot be rendered correctly.
The classic serif fonts cannot be rendered correctly at low DPI not only due to their serifs (which must be enlarged at low resolutions, to avoid their disappearance; this transforms all classic serif typefaces into uglier slab-serif typefaces), but also due to their "contrast", i.e. because they have both thin and thick lines (which are equalized in width at low resolutions, distorting the glyphs). Some of the better modern sans serif typefaces, e.g. Optima, also cannot be rendered correctly at low DPI, due to their variable-width lines.
On high DPI displays, the preference for sans serif or for serif is driven mainly by the familiarity with the tested typefaces, so it is impossible to predict from the results of a half hour test, where the people may see for the first time some typefaces, which of them they would prefer after using them continuously for six months.
The classic serif fonts cannot be rendered correctly at low DPI not only due to their serifs (which must be enlarged at low resolutions, to avoid their disappearance; this transforms all classic serif typefaces into uglier slab-serif typefaces), but also due to their "contrast", i.e. because they have both thin and thick lines (which are equalized in width at low resolutions, distorting the glyphs). Some of the better modern sans serif typefaces, e.g. Optima, also cannot be rendered correctly at low DPI, due to their variable-width lines.
On high DPI displays, the preference for sans serif or for serif is driven mainly by the familiarity with the tested typefaces, so it is impossible to predict from the results of a half hour test, where the people may see for the first time some typefaces, which of them they would prefer after using them continuously for six months.
Sans-serif type for printed documents?
[deleted]
Hmm. Are serif fonts beginning to die out altogether, actually? I definitely feel like I see a lot more sans serif than I used to.
I see them mostly as display fonts.
I think design trends ebb and flow. We're currently in a period of strong minimalism. But sooner or later some designers will start using serif typefaces in order to stand out and the trend will reverse.
The last decade was strongly minimalist in terms of design, while this one is showing the opposite direction in many ways.
Although my brain thinks any serif font document as more “legitimate”, I can’t think of any reason to use serif in a world of such high resolution screens and printers.
I think you got that backwards. The reason why sans serif fonts became popular is because computer displays are low resolution. Before that, they were often used for ads because they were deemed eccentric. On a modern, high resolution display with hundreds of DPIs you can have all the serifs you want.
Not everyone has a high resolution screen and printer, and it is still important to communicate to those who cannot afford them.
Additionally, I find it hard to discern the difference between 0 and O and I, 1, and l in many sans serif fonts (although the same can be said for some serif fonts).
Additionally, I find it hard to discern the difference between 0 and O and I, 1, and l in many sans serif fonts (although the same can be said for some serif fonts).
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How are they planning to deal with the I-l issue? Hope that it never comes up?
My browser renders this in sans serif, but adds serifs to I. I'm on firefox/linux and it's defaulting to the css `sans-serif` and I don't have the energy to research how to find what that defaults to right now.
Dev tools → Inspector panel → Fonts subpanel → Fonts Used, and you can hover over each to see highlighted which glyphs are being rendered in that font.
Turns out it's Noto Sans Regular, and not DejaVu as another commenter thought!
I would imagine that it isn't changing font for the l specifically but just has a sans font that includes a tail on the l. This text box that I'm using, for instance, is Dejavu Sans Mono which does exactly that.
Defaults on Firefox are all from DejaVu family: https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/
Mozilla has a custom font for their branding called Zilla Slab, but I believe that's only serif.
Mozilla has a custom font for their branding called Zilla Slab, but I believe that's only serif.
This is incorrect. Firefox does ship an emoji font, but for the rest it delegates default-selection to fontconfig, and it’s likely to have a very long list of possibilities, depending on its configuration (see /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.default for a start) and what’s installed.
Run `fc-match --all sans-serif` to see how it resolves. On my machine, Noto Sans gets higher priority than DejaVu Sans (though I’ve configured Concourse 4 as the top preference, in ~/.config/fontconfig).
Run `fc-match --all sans-serif` to see how it resolves. On my machine, Noto Sans gets higher priority than DejaVu Sans (though I’ve configured Concourse 4 as the top preference, in ~/.config/fontconfig).
Yes, but this isn't all that helpful with printed documents.
This is part of why some important government reports still use all caps. It's also a leftover from the telegraph era.
INTELLIGENCE REPORT FOR THE PRESIDENT
STATE DEPARTMENT
SECRET/NOFORN
JANUARY 18 2023
CONTENTS: 1. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS WITHIN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 2. PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM 3. TURKEY AND NATO
INTELLIGENCE REPORT FOR THE PRESIDENT
STATE DEPARTMENT
SECRET/NOFORN
JANUARY 18 2023
CONTENTS: 1. POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS WITHIN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION 2. PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM 3. TURKEY AND NATO
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Why are you yelling at me?
Skeuomorphism is a strong impulse.
Exactly, bIg > lIl
I never understand why someone in charge of making one specific simple choice, ends up making a remarkable dumb decision. Why, unless you are doing things unethically, would you go for a licensed font?
It's not like this is a hard problem to solve more than adequately with open and more accessible alternatives.
It's not like this is a hard problem to solve more than adequately with open and more accessible alternatives.
Do you think Anthony Blinken knows what a licensed or unlicensed font is?
I would hope someone who don't know the context or effect of a choice they are making, at the least consults with someone who does? This isn't rocket science to get right.
Font licensing is an incredibly niche thing to be aware of. I'm highly confident the people involved in this decision simply saw that Calibri was the default font in Microsoft Office and didn't think twice about the availability of it. Perhaps someone farther down the chain of command raised a concern about licensing, but I doubt such a concern would make its way back up the chain. It seems like something only lower level employees, graphic artists, or even IT administrators would be aware of.
Anecdotally, the most pressing concern I made to management during my career only ever made its way up two levels in the corporate ladder, not including my manager. I have a feeling the State Department is even more rigid with communication flow.
Anecdotally, the most pressing concern I made to management during my career only ever made its way up two levels in the corporate ladder, not including my manager. I have a feeling the State Department is even more rigid with communication flow.
It could also be that Microsoft are acknowledging the dominance of mobile devices and that they, as well as State, are optimising for reading on mobile rather than desktop or printed output.
This is amongst the few defensible rationales I can conceive of. The OCR argument offered in the Birdsite thread seems ... weak at best.
(As I've noted in another comment.)
This is amongst the few defensible rationales I can conceive of. The OCR argument offered in the Birdsite thread seems ... weak at best.
(As I've noted in another comment.)
This is such a weird HN-style take. I would bet money the start of this selection was "give me a list of the fonts on all our computers right now" and then they picked one. Probably Calibri after seeing it as the default in some other application.
Nobody at the State Department is diving into the intricacies of font licensure.
Nobody at the State Department is diving into the intricacies of font licensure.
Can you describe what "HN-style take" means to you?
I'm saying that a decision should be made by weighing pros/cons by someone qualified to make them. If that's HN-y, then that sounds great.
It doesn't sound like how you described this process is anything short of incompetence or "phoning it in". Which, I'm sure is a valid explanation for how they ended up deciding it. But, I'm using the word "dumb" in not a literal sense. It covers both incompetence and laziness.
Also, if you are deciding on a font to be used widely. One of the key aspects is exactly the license. It describes the conditions for its use. If your job is to evaluate which fonts to use, and you don't consider the conditions for its use, then yes, you are incompetent in that decision. And its not "intricate", its the bare minimum expected.
I'm saying that a decision should be made by weighing pros/cons by someone qualified to make them. If that's HN-y, then that sounds great.
It doesn't sound like how you described this process is anything short of incompetence or "phoning it in". Which, I'm sure is a valid explanation for how they ended up deciding it. But, I'm using the word "dumb" in not a literal sense. It covers both incompetence and laziness.
Also, if you are deciding on a font to be used widely. One of the key aspects is exactly the license. It describes the conditions for its use. If your job is to evaluate which fonts to use, and you don't consider the conditions for its use, then yes, you are incompetent in that decision. And its not "intricate", its the bare minimum expected.
Everyone at the State Department is using Word. Word includes Calibri. That's literally the only thing he's concerned about.
Calibri is the default font for new documents in Microsoft Office since Office 2007, when it first appeared. So they probably didn't even bother with browsing the choices, just documented what was the easiest for the users.
Do you think that Anthony Blinken came up with the idea of using Calibri?
I mean, that's not implausible. This sounds like exactly what would happen if one person had a specific font preference and happened to be in charge.
[deleted]
I happen to know this because it was a recent crossword puzzle answer, but it's Antony (no "h").
Logistics probably. With out a doubt you know this font is deployed on most systems around the world. It’s maintained by one of the largest companies in the world. And its provenance can be assured.
Now I want to make a custom Times New Roman font with unpredictable ligatures and 0-width vector data so poorly monitored systems create false data when printed in hardcopy.
I’m reminded of the humorous screenshot quoting “Times New Bastard”
Just looked this up: that's fantastic.
Aside from licensing, usability studies show that serif fonts are more legible than sans serif fonts, so I have no idea where they came up with the idea that somehow they're harder to read for people with disabilities when all prior research I'm aware of has shown the opposite.
I don't believe that is true anymore, I've seen studies that show that there is little difference between the two.
It should be noted that older studies are all about paper and signs, while newer ones tend to focus on screens. There are some important differences between the two esp. when it comes to low-DPI screens (which are sadly still typical for office desktops).
Yes! This a thousand times. Many universities I know now discourage sans-serif fonts for screen reasons and prefer Arial because one study showed a slight preference for those who were dyslexic. The evidence is far from strong [1] and frankly I feel like doing a meta-analysis of it in my spare time. I really, really, really dislike Arial and find it harder to read than others.
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dyslexia%20arial%20font...
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dyslexia%20arial%20font...
I'm puzzled why sans-serif fonts would be discouraged for screen reasons. My understanding is that serif fonts are more visibly degraded than sans-serif fonts on low-resolution displays.
Displays are no longer low-resolution.
Buy a cheap Android phone.
Or don't use a Mac (https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware#graphics-metric-...).
I vaguely remember something about there being a difference on printed paper vs screens when it comes to serifs. But also, aren't most aircraft controls labeled in something like Futura? I believe the Apollo program and other aerospace studies decided that was the most legible.
Reading a control label is very different from reading a paper or onscreen memo.
Lower-dpi screens, including the traditional ~96 dpi of classic monitors, makes serif-fonts less clear.
High-definition screens (such as the iMac retina display I'm looking at presently) and many e-ink devices hit 200+ dpi (200--300 is not uncommon for e-ink), which is the starting point for many laserprinters, though those can go to 600--1200 dpi. Monchrome vs. colour will show some distinction in clarity (monochrome effectively has about 3x greater resolution in displays given three-colour picture elements (pels).
My own experience is that I much prefer serif to sans-serif fonts for any substantial reading, though labels and titles may read better in a sans font.
State's decision here seems quite flawed.
High-definition screens (such as the iMac retina display I'm looking at presently) and many e-ink devices hit 200+ dpi (200--300 is not uncommon for e-ink), which is the starting point for many laserprinters, though those can go to 600--1200 dpi. Monchrome vs. colour will show some distinction in clarity (monochrome effectively has about 3x greater resolution in displays given three-colour picture elements (pels).
My own experience is that I much prefer serif to sans-serif fonts for any substantial reading, though labels and titles may read better in a sans font.
State's decision here seems quite flawed.
The thought does occur:
Given that Calibri is Microsoft Office's default font ...
... and that Mobile has vastly overtaken Desktop in number of devices (by roughly an order of magnitude) ...
... then it may well be that both Microsoft and the State Department are optimising for reading on mobile. Which could be defensible, I suppose.
Though a far better practice would be to adopt a flexible document standard (say, ePub or HTML, though they're of course not unrelated), which will then adapt to appropriate media characterstics and, say, display in a sans font on small mobile devices and serif in print or large, high-def devices and displays.
(Note that "large" and "high definition" are not necessarily identical: a projection display is large but often not especially high definition. Likewise public signage and the like.)
Edit: As this 2012 NNGroup (Jakob Nielsen) suggests: in "Serif vs. Sans-Serif Fonts for HD Screens". Though the piece notes that with high-definition displays of 200 dpi and above reasons to avoid serif-based fonts are mooted, there's still no clear argument for them either:
Almost all mainstream printed newspapers, magazines, and books use serif type, and thus people are more accustomed to reading long texts in this style. However, given the research data, the difference in reading speed between serif and sans serif is apparently quite small. Thus, there's no strong usability guideline in favor of using one or the other, so you can make the choice based on other considerations — such as branding or the mood communicated by a particular typographical style.
<https://www.nngroup.com/articles/serif-vs-sans-serif-fonts-h...>
(I note that as a strong fan of serif-based fonts for long-form works myself.)
Given that Calibri is Microsoft Office's default font ...
... and that Mobile has vastly overtaken Desktop in number of devices (by roughly an order of magnitude) ...
... then it may well be that both Microsoft and the State Department are optimising for reading on mobile. Which could be defensible, I suppose.
Though a far better practice would be to adopt a flexible document standard (say, ePub or HTML, though they're of course not unrelated), which will then adapt to appropriate media characterstics and, say, display in a sans font on small mobile devices and serif in print or large, high-def devices and displays.
(Note that "large" and "high definition" are not necessarily identical: a projection display is large but often not especially high definition. Likewise public signage and the like.)
Edit: As this 2012 NNGroup (Jakob Nielsen) suggests: in "Serif vs. Sans-Serif Fonts for HD Screens". Though the piece notes that with high-definition displays of 200 dpi and above reasons to avoid serif-based fonts are mooted, there's still no clear argument for them either:
Almost all mainstream printed newspapers, magazines, and books use serif type, and thus people are more accustomed to reading long texts in this style. However, given the research data, the difference in reading speed between serif and sans serif is apparently quite small. Thus, there's no strong usability guideline in favor of using one or the other, so you can make the choice based on other considerations — such as branding or the mood communicated by a particular typographical style.
<https://www.nngroup.com/articles/serif-vs-sans-serif-fonts-h...>
(I note that as a strong fan of serif-based fonts for long-form works myself.)
Apparently the serifs don't work as well on OCR and screen readers.
https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1615486871571935232
https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1615486871571935232
Why would you build a screen reader without targeting the most common font of the last thirty years? That's like making a license plate reader that has trouble with white license plates.
I thought the same thing. Surely it must be a function of the prevalence of these fonts though. In a hypothetical world where 90% of text you read is in sans serif I'd have to imagine that this would tilt the readability study results in sans serif's favor. I wonder if the studies attempt to control for this somehow?
Your average person doing office work already has access to the font. There’s nothing dumb about reading the room
It's the default font in MS Office. If the State Department uses Office (and they almost certainly do), then it's an obvious choice.
Yeah, I was wondering if they finally upgraded computers with Win XP and Office 2003 (with default font Times New Roman) to Win 10/11 and Office 2021/Office 365 (with default font Calibri).
Now if we can get the Chinese factories to replace the nasty old serif font they use for every label…
I always assumed that's Times New Roman.
I'm guessing it's because those were the shapes that were delivered for the Latin characters in one of the earliest CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) fonts, the MingLiU:
https://www.pickafont.com/fonts/MingLiU.html
I guess us westerners see it a lot because it was much simpler for the manufacturers to just use 1 font file for all the different locales of the gadgets (either the cheapo MP3-player, or the label printer).
It was even there on Windows 3.0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CJK_fonts
I guess us westerners see it a lot because it was much simpler for the manufacturers to just use 1 font file for all the different locales of the gadgets (either the cheapo MP3-player, or the label printer).
It was even there on Windows 3.0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CJK_fonts
What I want to know is what they were doing before 2004 when they adopted Times New Roman. Courier? Gothic?
Calibri is a nice screen-reading typeface. It is likely that "upstairs" reads on a screen, but I wouldn't bet that much on it.
Times New Roman was designed to shove as many letters into a multi-column newspaper page as possible. It's atrocious for anything else, and should be confined to whence it came, print newspapers. It's only the default because it is the default. Good riddance.
Calibri is a nice screen-reading typeface. It is likely that "upstairs" reads on a screen, but I wouldn't bet that much on it.
Times New Roman was designed to shove as many letters into a multi-column newspaper page as possible. It's atrocious for anything else, and should be confined to whence it came, print newspapers. It's only the default because it is the default. Good riddance.
Yeah, Courier (size 12, double-spaced?) because it was very close to typewriters. I can't find a wikipedia source though, so I may be mis-remembering.
Just waiting for this directive to replace last week's gas stove fauxsteria.
Allegedly during Colin Powell’ time at the State Department there was quite an ordeal to change paper sizes for communication between offices: https://www.govexec.com/magazine/2001/06/the-powell-leadersh...
“correspondence between headquarters and overseas embassies, known as Diplomatic Notes, for years had to be accompanied by a legal-size (8 1/2-inch by 14-inch) cover sheet. That wasn't really a big deal when the notes were drafted on typewriters. But Ted Strickler, head of State's Office of Foreign Missions, found that since the introduction of the desktop computer, his employees were spending a lot of extra time formatting the notes and fiddling with the paper in the printer. He checked to see whether he could use standard 8 1/2-inch by 11-inch paper for the Diplomatic Notes, instead. He was told to submit a formal action memorandum suggesting the change. Strickler submitted the suggestion to his superiors in January 1999. A year went by. He found out his action memorandum had been lost, so he resubmitted it. In early 2001-two years after he recommended the change in the first place-the department approved the use of standard paper. "If anything so innocuous as changing the size of the paper for Diplomatic Notes was so exceedingly difficult, how difficult would it be to make more important changes?" Strickler says.“
“correspondence between headquarters and overseas embassies, known as Diplomatic Notes, for years had to be accompanied by a legal-size (8 1/2-inch by 14-inch) cover sheet. That wasn't really a big deal when the notes were drafted on typewriters. But Ted Strickler, head of State's Office of Foreign Missions, found that since the introduction of the desktop computer, his employees were spending a lot of extra time formatting the notes and fiddling with the paper in the printer. He checked to see whether he could use standard 8 1/2-inch by 11-inch paper for the Diplomatic Notes, instead. He was told to submit a formal action memorandum suggesting the change. Strickler submitted the suggestion to his superiors in January 1999. A year went by. He found out his action memorandum had been lost, so he resubmitted it. In early 2001-two years after he recommended the change in the first place-the department approved the use of standard paper. "If anything so innocuous as changing the size of the paper for Diplomatic Notes was so exceedingly difficult, how difficult would it be to make more important changes?" Strickler says.“
And still not even A4
A/B/C paper series formats are based on metrics system and therefore, morally evil and unfit for the US consumption.
In case anyone is unaware, A0 is 1m^2 in size, and each adjacent number is half the size (i.e. A1 = 500 000 mm^2, A2 = 250 000 mm^2, A3 = 125 000 mm^2, A4 = 62 500 mm^2).
This has the great advantage of allowing documents to be easily up and down-scaled on a photocopier - i.e. an A3 document can be printed at 50% scale on an A4 sheet.
I wonder if anyone ever tried to do something similar with imperial units (AKA English units to the US Americans) - i.e. create sheets of papers with side-length of sqrt(2) : 1, and the largest being 1 square yard or similar.
This has the great advantage of allowing documents to be easily up and down-scaled on a photocopier - i.e. an A3 document can be printed at 50% scale on an A4 sheet.
I wonder if anyone ever tried to do something similar with imperial units (AKA English units to the US Americans) - i.e. create sheets of papers with side-length of sqrt(2) : 1, and the largest being 1 square yard or similar.
You're correct, but also forgetting the best part. The ratio between width and length stays the same!!
This specifically is what allows easy up-/downscaling for an A* size.
This specifically is what allows easy up-/downscaling for an A* size.
I guess the key thing actually is that the width of A(n) is the same as the height of A(n+1).
How often do you need to scale up or down a printed document? I don't see how that is useful.
Print shops nearly always print multiple copies/multiple pages of a job onto larger sheets and them cut and collate them afterwards, as the print step takes the longest time which includes moving sheets in and starting the print and then stopping the print and moving the result out.
An A1 sheet can fit 4x A3 posters, 8x A4 pages or 16x A5 flyer/booklet pages without any wastage, so all you need is a single A1 printer.
An A1 sheet can fit 4x A3 posters, 8x A4 pages or 16x A5 flyer/booklet pages without any wastage, so all you need is a single A1 printer.
US paper sizes:
ANSI A == 8.5 x 11 inches (letter)
ANSI B == 11 x 17 inches
ANSI C == 17 x 22 inches
ANSI D == 22 x 34 inches
ANSI E == 34 x 44 inches
There are additional sizes frequently used in the US too: business card, legal, half letter, and specialized sizes for architecture.
ANSI A == 8.5 x 11 inches (letter)
ANSI B == 11 x 17 inches
ANSI C == 17 x 22 inches
ANSI D == 22 x 34 inches
ANSI E == 34 x 44 inches
There are additional sizes frequently used in the US too: business card, legal, half letter, and specialized sizes for architecture.
I’ve only ever seen letter size paper available in offices in the US whereas almost every office photocopier/printer in UK/EU is stocked with both both A4 and A3. The larger sheets are really nice for sketching diagrams.
11x17 printer trays were common for engineering use before we got decent high resolution monitors and most work process became paperless.
9 x 12 inches and 11 x 14 inches are standard in art paper in the US. As are 5 x 7 and 8 x 10.
The first one, 9 x 12, happens to also be “ARCH A” but I haven’t seen a fancy name for the others.
The first one, 9 x 12, happens to also be “ARCH A” but I haven’t seen a fancy name for the others.
* Imperial units are defined in terms of metric units.
* The cost of changing over is astronomical
* Domains where the metric system is actually better use the metric system
* Domains where it does not don't need it.
* You have a supercomputer on your wrist. Dividing by a number other than 10 is not such a challenge anymore.
* A4 paper is in no way superior to letter. It's just a choice.
Replacing American exceptionalism with European exceptionalism (usually because of someone's trip when they were in college) is not necessarily always an improvement.
* The cost of changing over is astronomical
* Domains where the metric system is actually better use the metric system
* Domains where it does not don't need it.
* You have a supercomputer on your wrist. Dividing by a number other than 10 is not such a challenge anymore.
* A4 paper is in no way superior to letter. It's just a choice.
Replacing American exceptionalism with European exceptionalism (usually because of someone's trip when they were in college) is not necessarily always an improvement.
> Replacing American exceptionalism with European exceptionalism (usually because of someone's trip when they were in college) is not necessarily always an improvement.
ISO 216 isn't specifically European. It's used in most of the world. The same is true of the metric system.
The world will indeed be incrementally better when people don't have to waste time converting measurements when operating between the US and elsewhere.
ISO 216 isn't specifically European. It's used in most of the world. The same is true of the metric system.
The world will indeed be incrementally better when people don't have to waste time converting measurements when operating between the US and elsewhere.
You assert it will be incrementally better without offsetting for the externalities of the switch, which would take decades.
Also the metric system is European in origin. Despite what chapter 0 of every science book implies god did not invent it.
Also the metric system is European in origin. Despite what chapter 0 of every science book implies god did not invent it.
Here's the thing about the switching and the costs of it: every other country, much poorer than the modern US of A, went through it just fine. And in any case, this cost is not going to go down the longer you wait, on the contrary—unless, of course, the US industrial prowess utterly collapses so that there is not much left to upgrade.
You're trying to say that because they did it and they're poorer it should be easier for us because we're richer. First of all, the cost will be in proportion to the activity of the economy and the population. Second, the proportion of people who were educated to use units of any kind was a smaller proportion of that smaller population. And in many former-non-metric countries many quantities are still often quoted in the old units.
All of that and it is still the case that the primary system in the US is the metric system de jure if not de facto. De facto, the metric system is virtually universal in science domains in the US.
Whether the metric system is "better" or not is not the question. There are keyboard layouts not actually designed to slow down typing, but it's just one of those things that most people don't see worth changing. Are they wrong? In that case, it's an individual valuation. I'm sure "the US economy is losing $500b because of QWERTY" would make great copy on a slow news day on reddit. But unless it costs <$500n to make the change, we aren't actually losing anything.
Not everyone is a relentless optimizer. Even some of us who are also like to optimize for the entire system, including transaction costs/overhead/maintenance and not just some ab initio declaration of right like god in genesis.
The US has a great solution that everyone hates because it's the US: we use metric where it's necessary and leave it alone everywhere else. We could use a lot more European know how in numerous other sectors. I would even go so far as to say it's probably correct to presume that things where the US is the outlier is a case where we are the ones doing it wrong.
It's a presumption, meaning evidence can rebut it. In this case, here we can manage both. We can teach both in schools, we can use computers and calculators to divide by numbers other than 10 (which you have to do with mixed units and constants in metric calculations anyway). In fact, I wonder if there's proof that all of this extra teaching and double system overhead is worth what it costs! I bet the answer is that it is though and as long as you can experiment and find out in your domain, it sounds great to me. Different systems for the win!
All of that and it is still the case that the primary system in the US is the metric system de jure if not de facto. De facto, the metric system is virtually universal in science domains in the US.
Whether the metric system is "better" or not is not the question. There are keyboard layouts not actually designed to slow down typing, but it's just one of those things that most people don't see worth changing. Are they wrong? In that case, it's an individual valuation. I'm sure "the US economy is losing $500b because of QWERTY" would make great copy on a slow news day on reddit. But unless it costs <$500n to make the change, we aren't actually losing anything.
Not everyone is a relentless optimizer. Even some of us who are also like to optimize for the entire system, including transaction costs/overhead/maintenance and not just some ab initio declaration of right like god in genesis.
The US has a great solution that everyone hates because it's the US: we use metric where it's necessary and leave it alone everywhere else. We could use a lot more European know how in numerous other sectors. I would even go so far as to say it's probably correct to presume that things where the US is the outlier is a case where we are the ones doing it wrong.
It's a presumption, meaning evidence can rebut it. In this case, here we can manage both. We can teach both in schools, we can use computers and calculators to divide by numbers other than 10 (which you have to do with mixed units and constants in metric calculations anyway). In fact, I wonder if there's proof that all of this extra teaching and double system overhead is worth what it costs! I bet the answer is that it is though and as long as you can experiment and find out in your domain, it sounds great to me. Different systems for the win!
> Also the metric system is European in origin.
As is quite a lot of American culture. Lots of good European ideas got improved on by America. Do one more ;-)
As is quite a lot of American culture. Lots of good European ideas got improved on by America. Do one more ;-)
America would be better with just three little improvements:
- Celsius temperatures near any Fahrenheit article/post/news.
- The metric system. Just scale up and down by ten. You already do it with dollars. So consider it done.
- ISO 6801 dates. Year, month, day. Things scale down logically. Years are composed of months; and months, of days. Also, they would be no ambiguity issues.
- Celsius temperatures near any Fahrenheit article/post/news.
- The metric system. Just scale up and down by ten. You already do it with dollars. So consider it done.
- ISO 6801 dates. Year, month, day. Things scale down logically. Years are composed of months; and months, of days. Also, they would be no ambiguity issues.
For the amount of money you're proposing to spend to make America better we could fund universal health care and almost completely fund 2-year college for everyone. I think that would be money better spent.
And despite what everyone thinks of our schools, we manage to learn both systems and divide by numbers other than 10.
The imperial system is also European. fwiw Canada did the changeover to metric in the 70 and took about a decade and I’m rather glad we did it.
It's like technical debt. The longer you wait to fix it, the more it will cost you.
You people can downvote me all you want and the fact remains that the costs to make the switch are too high to happen any time soon. The real world isn't your company where you can just mandate things. Stakeholders, such as voters, get a say. Voters probably wouldn't support this if there was a net benefit in cost, but there's not, not anymore.
Of all of the things that are broken about the US, everyone here wants to fix the one thing that's not: our ambidexterity with units. Every school child learns both. We're terrible at raising kids to be bilingual, but we manage to teach them both metric and imperial units.
Once you concede that the metric system is already in de jure use in the US and in de facto use in domains where it's best to use it, you lose all kinds of benefit from switches. The low hanging fruit has been picked. You're left with empty non-empirical arguments like ... ummm... it's better to use one system. It is! But we're not starting from scratch.
Seriously, of all of the things I have posted on HN none has gotten more downvotes than saying that we don't need to go 100% metric in the US, I could speculate as to why, but it sure seems like this is some kind of nerd anti-normie shibboleth. It shouldn't be.
Go ahead, look up the figures. Then decide if it's still worth it to you. If it is, then try and convince enough policymakers not to just support it as the US does but to change everything over. You won't win that war. There has to be some specific need for the change.
'It would be cool' or 'it soothes my OCD' or whatever aren't enough to change something this massive.
Most problems it's a dodge to say "the money is better spent on X" but when you're talking about significant fractions of GDP that's just not how it is. We could do so much to improve people's lives with these sums of money.
Reminder that this is all about the US government internally sticking with letter sized paper. A4 paper is still A4 when measured in inches (which can be done exactly since inches are defined in terms of meters).
Of all of the things that are broken about the US, everyone here wants to fix the one thing that's not: our ambidexterity with units. Every school child learns both. We're terrible at raising kids to be bilingual, but we manage to teach them both metric and imperial units.
Once you concede that the metric system is already in de jure use in the US and in de facto use in domains where it's best to use it, you lose all kinds of benefit from switches. The low hanging fruit has been picked. You're left with empty non-empirical arguments like ... ummm... it's better to use one system. It is! But we're not starting from scratch.
Seriously, of all of the things I have posted on HN none has gotten more downvotes than saying that we don't need to go 100% metric in the US, I could speculate as to why, but it sure seems like this is some kind of nerd anti-normie shibboleth. It shouldn't be.
Go ahead, look up the figures. Then decide if it's still worth it to you. If it is, then try and convince enough policymakers not to just support it as the US does but to change everything over. You won't win that war. There has to be some specific need for the change.
'It would be cool' or 'it soothes my OCD' or whatever aren't enough to change something this massive.
Most problems it's a dodge to say "the money is better spent on X" but when you're talking about significant fractions of GDP that's just not how it is. We could do so much to improve people's lives with these sums of money.
Reminder that this is all about the US government internally sticking with letter sized paper. A4 paper is still A4 when measured in inches (which can be done exactly since inches are defined in terms of meters).
> You assert it will be incrementally better without offsetting for the externalities of the switch, which would take decades
The use of SI units is likely measured in centuries. You'll be fine, and you might save a few rockets, rollercoasters and planes here and there:
https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/6Page53.pdf
The use of SI units is likely measured in centuries. You'll be fine, and you might save a few rockets, rollercoasters and planes here and there:
https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/6Page53.pdf
That one incident is because they didn't use metric in a domain where it would benefit from it. You won't save that rocket by changing how my clothes are labelled.
Consistency across all domains is a benefit in itself.
Yes, but as with everyone else, you are not factoring in the empirical value of the costs and just asserting it would be better.
And as already noted, since the switch can happen over 1-2 decades but the permanence of units is measured in centuries. The benefits of clarity and consistency over that timeline necessarily outweigh the downsides.
I am not an American, I was raised using the metric system for almost everything, but I hate using it for manual work like carpentry and plumbing. For a long time in my country, we used the imperial system for stuff like that, and the change to metric is incredibly annoying and non-intuitive in those domains.
It seems non-intuitive exactly because you are used to imperial: "For a long time in my country, we used the imperial system for stuff like that". If you really were raised using metric not for almost everything, but for everything, it would seem intuitive and you've found the other system strange. And vice versa. That's just, in immortal words of Bjork "human behaviour".
He just said he wasn't American so why would it be intuitive to him?
I am not an American, but until a few years ago there was not much of a push to move to metric on things like tools and plumbing. A lot of the world used imperial for such things even if they were not former british colonies.
I understood what you meant. I was just saying that your case is different since it wasn't necessarily that way for you the way it is for Americans.
There are many domains where imperial units have a nice human scale that makes sense, and then there are others where it is total trash and useless. I still fail to see what's so terrible about using both.
There are many domains where imperial units have a nice human scale that makes sense, and then there are others where it is total trash and useless. I still fail to see what's so terrible about using both.
Why are you bringing up imperial units? The US doesn't use them. The US uses US customary units.
Because they are based on (sorta) imperial and nobody really knows the difference all that well. So people say imperial when referring to the non metric countries that happen to speak English.
At least insofar as being defined in terms of metric units, the statement you replied to was accurate for both imperial and customary.
At least insofar as being defined in terms of metric units, the statement you replied to was accurate for both imperial and customary.
Aside from being overly pedantic, which is the reason I used the term, the doubly overly pedantic reply is that we do have the Imperial system, just redefined to be different than the itself-later-redefined imperial system.
Furthermore, the names of the units are from the imperial system, even if the definitions themselves are not.
Furthermore, the names of the units are from the imperial system, even if the definitions themselves are not.
Try pouring an imperial gallon into a us gallon container and then tell me I'm being overly pedantic.
The names of the units are from the winchester system which is what predated both US customary units and Imperial units.
The names of the units are from the winchester system which is what predated both US customary units and Imperial units.
I didn't say "imperial gallon" I said "imperial system" which is both historically correct and what people colloquially call it.
Yes, since we adopted those units the measures have changed repeatedly on both sides of the Atlantic. I get it.
The US customary units were 1st established prior to the imperial system existing so it is not historically correct to say they are based upon the imperial system.
> The cost of changing over is astronomical
as opposed to the cost of not changing over, which is much larger but paid in small increments over time so nobody is bothered enough to do anything about it
as opposed to the cost of not changing over, which is much larger but paid in small increments over time so nobody is bothered enough to do anything about it
That's false. Most domains where it would benefit have already made the change.
> metric [...] morally evil
I've never heard an American complain that Coca Cola is sold by the liter. There's no moral component to Americans not wanting to switch to metric. It's simply a matter of the switch and retooling being more hassle than continuing to use American customary units. Frankly, the difference seems to bother Europeans a lot more than it bothers Americans.
I've never heard an American complain that Coca Cola is sold by the liter. There's no moral component to Americans not wanting to switch to metric. It's simply a matter of the switch and retooling being more hassle than continuing to use American customary units. Frankly, the difference seems to bother Europeans a lot more than it bothers Americans.
> Frankly, the difference seems to bother Europeans a lot more than it bothers Americans.
Probably because European consume a lot of content from the US which makes little sense to them
Probably because European consume a lot of content from the US which makes little sense to them
Same observation here. We (Americans) just don’t care. Not like we’re sitting here huffing and puffing about metric.
Nobody. Cares.
At the end of the day, the one you’re used to is the one that makes more sense. There is no system that is objectively better “in all situations.”
Most people that strongly argue that one is better than the other are usually just saying “it’s better cuz I’m used to it”
Nobody. Cares.
At the end of the day, the one you’re used to is the one that makes more sense. There is no system that is objectively better “in all situations.”
Most people that strongly argue that one is better than the other are usually just saying “it’s better cuz I’m used to it”
One argument would be "the best system is the one that everyone agrees on" [1]. Lower risk for big mistakes.
[1] https://everydayastronaut.com/mars-climate-orbiter/
[1] https://everydayastronaut.com/mars-climate-orbiter/
These always make for fun news articles but that's because these situations are rare.
Again, nobody, anywhere that I'm aware of, is sitting around insisting for imperial units as a matter of principle. We just don't care. We use and learn metric where we use it (all the sciences, chemistry, physics, etc in American schools are taught in metric). And we use imperial where we use it, mostly in daily life. And it's perfectly fine.
For example, I personally prefer grams (more because of weight, but still preferred to ounces) to cups (volume) in recipes because it removes density as a variable (a packed cup of flour vs a loose cup of flour)
Again, nobody, anywhere that I'm aware of, is sitting around insisting for imperial units as a matter of principle. We just don't care. We use and learn metric where we use it (all the sciences, chemistry, physics, etc in American schools are taught in metric). And we use imperial where we use it, mostly in daily life. And it's perfectly fine.
For example, I personally prefer grams (more because of weight, but still preferred to ounces) to cups (volume) in recipes because it removes density as a variable (a packed cup of flour vs a loose cup of flour)
> "everyone agrees on"
"Everyone" in what scope? For an international team of engineers and scientists, the answer is obviously metric. But if "everybody" in the relevant context is other tradesmen in America, then "everybody" agrees on the American customary units. It doesn't matter to the latter what the former pick.
"Everyone" in what scope? For an international team of engineers and scientists, the answer is obviously metric. But if "everybody" in the relevant context is other tradesmen in America, then "everybody" agrees on the American customary units. It doesn't matter to the latter what the former pick.
Metric is easier. How does the humanity count? By using powers of 10. The usability it's right there. Just keep adding zeros.
But you've just stated that metric is easier mathematically. And I agree with you 100%, for that use case.
But C/F makes absolutely no difference in understanding the weather. Or cooking temperatures. Apart from measuring body temperature and possibly controlled lab environments, there is no situation in life where you need to break temperatures into 1/10 units or benchmark the weather on the boiling/freezing temperatures of water at sea level (I'm talking about the population at large, not meteorologists).
Miles/KM make absolutely no difference in understanding the distance you need to drive somewhere. The fact that a KM is 1000m does nothing to help you understand that the neighboring city is 40 miles (or 64km, or 64,000m) away.
Inches/MM make no difference when I'm doing woodworking. Although, again, no doubt doing the math is easier in mm than adding/removing fractions for inches.
My point is that, one can agree with the simplicity and standardization of the metric system (and I love its consistency) and also argue that it makes no difference in daily life.
But C/F makes absolutely no difference in understanding the weather. Or cooking temperatures. Apart from measuring body temperature and possibly controlled lab environments, there is no situation in life where you need to break temperatures into 1/10 units or benchmark the weather on the boiling/freezing temperatures of water at sea level (I'm talking about the population at large, not meteorologists).
Miles/KM make absolutely no difference in understanding the distance you need to drive somewhere. The fact that a KM is 1000m does nothing to help you understand that the neighboring city is 40 miles (or 64km, or 64,000m) away.
Inches/MM make no difference when I'm doing woodworking. Although, again, no doubt doing the math is easier in mm than adding/removing fractions for inches.
My point is that, one can agree with the simplicity and standardization of the metric system (and I love its consistency) and also argue that it makes no difference in daily life.
The metric vs imperial discussion reminds me of Android vs iPhone discussions: Android users tend to care a lot more that their text message bubbles are green than the iPhone users do.
Ha! The rest of the world uses WhatsApp.
>I've never heard an American complain that Coca Cola is sold by the liter. There's no moral component to Americans not wanting to switch to metric.
There is, it's just that Americans are happy to overlook it here and there for completely arbitrary reasons.
There is, it's just that Americans are happy to overlook it here and there for completely arbitrary reasons.
> There is,
Show me the evidence. Where are these Americans sincerely claiming that metric is immoral?
Show me the evidence. Where are these Americans sincerely claiming that metric is immoral?
The American military uses metric.
The reason why the rest of the world cares more is because US is literally the only country that hasn't switched that "matters" (for engineering and business purposes). Until y'all do that, everybody else has to contend with two systems at least occasionally because of commerce, tourism etc. Once you do, it's just metric going forward, which makes things so much easier for everyone. Standards produce the most benefit when they're truly universal.
8.5”x11” is a standard size for the US and Canada, but not for the rest of the world. Which leads to the eternal problems for any NGOs or contractors working for the US government overseas who have to source Letter size for US gov partners and A4 for local partners!
Yep. Every time I have to renew my Australian passport I have to buy a ream of A4 paper. Every time I forget where last time's ream was stored. I suspect someday I'll find thousands of sheets somewhere lost in my basement.
Deep within your subconscious memories is a series of you unloading A4 from your printer, thinking about where to best store it, finding 20 reams already there, stacking this one on top, and then promptly forgetting the location.
"I don't put things where I think they should go, I put them where I am likely to look for them" - Adam Savage
I really like this quote, but I can't find any reference to Adam Savage saying it.
Closest I can find is his concept of "First Order Retrievability"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyCrHLYiGNo
Closest I can find is his concept of "First Order Retrievability"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyCrHLYiGNo
I recently watched the video where he said it, but I can't remember which one it was. It was one of the ones on the Tested channel, either an ask Adam or one of the questions from a live stream they made in to a video.
One of his "Ask Adam" videos, I believe the same one he discussed Pica pens.
> I really like this quote, but I can't find any reference to Adam Savage saying it.
Maybe, instead of attributing the quote to someone who said it, they attributed the quote to someone who they'd think would've said it.
Maybe, instead of attributing the quote to someone who said it, they attributed the quote to someone who they'd think would've said it.
No, Adam Savage has said something to this effect every time he talks about how his shop is organized and why it shifts around over time. The gist of it is that while most of his tools and common materials are first order retrievable, but theres a whole world of stuff in the shop that can't, so he thinks about where it should be stored and puts it there or there are times when a particular tool or set of tools is always used with some other thing in the shop, so it lives next to that other thing rather than on some rack of the same tools. What is most likely happening is that its all been in videos of which no readily searchable transcript exists, and he is not always very concise about explaining his core practices, so finding the exact quote is non-trivial.
Here's a Q&A where he says something like this: https://youtu.be/og0yYQAN1JE?t=233
I'd be better off putting them where I wouldn't look, that's probably where I'd look.
I've been following this since I heard him say it a few years ago, and I try to impress this upon my family as well
Periodically I buy things like Post-its because I can't find any--and then the next rare time when I really deep clean my office or attic, I find enough office supplies to open a stationary store.
A4 is an antimemetic paper size
The trick is, next time you need it, make note of where you first look for it, and when your acquire more, put the newly acquired paper on the first spot you looked for the old stuff.
Why doesn't renewing it online work? is there still a paper based component to it? I don't think I had that problem last time I renewed mine online.
I went the other way with it. Bought a ream of A4 and I use it for everything. I hope it causes chaos.
Does it really matter? Letter size is close enough to A4 that I doubt anyone but paper nerds would notice
Filing systems, automatic paper handling systems built for A4 won't process US legal. Passport forms include machine read sections such as signature, as do tax returns.
It won't fit in binders, envelope, storage boxes or tab folders.
It's asking for trouble, rejection is likely.
It won't fit in binders, envelope, storage boxes or tab folders.
It's asking for trouble, rejection is likely.
For sending official paperwork to a judge or a visa or something like that, there are a lot of rules. Sending A4 instead of Letter will make them reject your paperwork on the spot.
Someone told me a horror story about a PhD thesis rejected because it has wrong margins (probably something about the margins of the document and additional margins added by the driver). He has to reprint all the copies. Most universities are not so stupid, but if your university is stupid enough, remember to triple check the margins.
Someone told me a horror story about a PhD thesis rejected because it has wrong margins (probably something about the margins of the document and additional margins added by the driver). He has to reprint all the copies. Most universities are not so stupid, but if your university is stupid enough, remember to triple check the margins.
In the 80s at UIC, there was famously a woman in the graduate school who checked measurements of all margins and other spacing with a ruler and rejected dissertations which didn’t meet the strict requirements.
In the early 2000s there was a person at Indiana U who also did this. You had to get any dissertation approved by her before printing. And there was a ruler. Are PDFs accepted for dissertations yet?
Dissertations go through the library's Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) service these days. Margins still matter, as do tons and tons of fiddly bullshit.
My personal ETD "hilarity": there is/was a bug in Adobe Acrobat that caused the font I set my dissertation in to glitch/look jagged at exactly 100% zoom. If you shifted to 99.7% or 100.1%? It re-rendered and looked perfect. Only on Acrobat. Not in Chrome or Firefox or Preview or Foxit or anything else. I had to change the font for ETD to accept my document.
Changing the font doesn't sound like a big deal, and in principle it's easy to do, but it means none of the figures match the main text. The line breaks are now totally different, so those typeset line-endings and paragraphs that were rephrased to avoid awkward hyphenations? All gone.
For that and a few other more important reasons, I have two versions of my dissertation. There's the one hosted by ETD, and the one that I actually share and use professionally.
My personal ETD "hilarity": there is/was a bug in Adobe Acrobat that caused the font I set my dissertation in to glitch/look jagged at exactly 100% zoom. If you shifted to 99.7% or 100.1%? It re-rendered and looked perfect. Only on Acrobat. Not in Chrome or Firefox or Preview or Foxit or anything else. I had to change the font for ETD to accept my document.
Changing the font doesn't sound like a big deal, and in principle it's easy to do, but it means none of the figures match the main text. The line breaks are now totally different, so those typeset line-endings and paragraphs that were rephrased to avoid awkward hyphenations? All gone.
For that and a few other more important reasons, I have two versions of my dissertation. There's the one hosted by ETD, and the one that I actually share and use professionally.
For my MFA, my cohort was the first (and, it turned out last) to submit electronic copies of their theses. I doubt anyone was checking margins on that, although I made a point of making sure I hit all the formatting requirements. Of course, because I (and I think everyone from my cohort) requested an embargo of our theses expecting that someday we’d get NY publishing deals for our work. it effectively means that nobody will ever read them, unlike the cohorts who submitted printed theses which are shelved in the library so someone could go to the library and read them (at least in theory). Our program director mentioned something about some significant writer’s thesis in the University of Iowa library which has a note written inside the printed copy saying, “if you’re reading this, I guess I’m famous now.”
> Sending A4 instead of Letter will make them reject your paperwork on the spot.
This generally happens not because anyone actually cares about the paper size, but because some employee has a target to 'process 5 applications per day, and then you can go home.' If an application is made on the wrong size paper, thats an insta-deny, and the employee just saved themselves an hour!
This generally happens not because anyone actually cares about the paper size, but because some employee has a target to 'process 5 applications per day, and then you can go home.' If an application is made on the wrong size paper, thats an insta-deny, and the employee just saved themselves an hour!
It's more about making nice folders where all the sheets hace the same size, and be able to make holes in the same spot in all of them. The employee has to be there 8 hours per day, even if there in no application to process.
Why would anyone care if they received the other paper size? The differences are tiny.
Never underestimate the pettiness of a bureaucracy
Asetter us a bit wider it might not fit in a folder properly and when stacked with other A4 forms it won't match, which can be a flying also it probably is processed by a machine where it might not fit. (Say a scan er which extracts the signature to print onto the passport)
In the Philippines, it is even worse. At least four standards (A4, Letter, Legal, and Long Bond), and all of them are necessary for communication with various government agencies such as BIR.
I did not even know anything else than A4 existed, I just learned that now
Oh, come on. Everyone knows about A3 and A5.
For Americans et al. who don't know:
- A3 is (within physical tolerances, anyway) twice the size of A4
- A5 is half the size of A4
- A0 is the biggest size and and has an area of 1 square meter, although it is not a square but instead it has an aspect ratio of 1:sqrt(2) (technically all A-series papers have this aspect ratio because math says it is the aspect ratio that retains itself when halved)
- In practical sense, A5 is the smallest pre-packaged A-series paper that I have personally encountered, although I guess someone would chime that they handled A6 (half of A5) or smaller.
- A3 is (within physical tolerances, anyway) twice the size of A4
- A5 is half the size of A4
- A0 is the biggest size and and has an area of 1 square meter, although it is not a square but instead it has an aspect ratio of 1:sqrt(2) (technically all A-series papers have this aspect ratio because math says it is the aspect ratio that retains itself when halved)
- In practical sense, A5 is the smallest pre-packaged A-series paper that I have personally encountered, although I guess someone would chime that they handled A6 (half of A5) or smaller.
Never saw A6 printer paper, but it’s quite common for note cards / index cards.
> technically all A-series papers have this aspect ratio because math says it is the aspect ratio that retains itself when halved
I never knew this, but that's awesome. Thanks for the info!
I never knew this, but that's awesome. Thanks for the info!
Sure, I meant the imperial sizes in inches, never heard about that before. I assumed A4 was the global standard.
Powell began his term in January of 2001. It isn't clear how "early" in 2001 this change was made, but it seems to have been in process well before the Powell term as SoS and only completed shortly after he took office.
No wonder State Department is called Foggy Bottom (I know the real reason) but it lives up to its name.
US Government Letter Paper is 8x10.5 inches, though I think it's used only for internal documents. Probably too much inertia to try to change it to 8.5x11.
> "If anything so innocuous as changing the size of the paper for Diplomatic Notes was so exceedingly difficult, how difficult would it be to make more important changes?" Strickler says.
How difficult was it to change the size? Getting the official requirement changed was difficult; what would have happened if he hadn't bothered and had just started sending everything on normal paper?
How difficult was it to change the size? Getting the official requirement changed was difficult; what would have happened if he hadn't bothered and had just started sending everything on normal paper?
I imagine this memo reading like that one in Snow Crash about the inter-office toilet paper sharing system, and employees dutifully reading the memo for exactly X number of minutes to ensure their computer's tracking software notes that they've read the article for the appropriate amount of time.
So they are upgrading Microsoft Office from 2003 to 2007?
More like retiring the last gov installation of Office 2003.
this is a 'diplomatic signal' gesture as a demonstration of political power by MSFT
I feel like they don’t have enough work to do if they’re worried about fonts.
Maybe time to trim some fat?
Maybe time to trim some fat?
For sure, why improve anything.
Maybe because nobody checked to see if it wasn't a downgrade instead.
What a god-awful choice for a replacement.
A shame they didn’t opt for Public Sans, which was designed by the US Web Design System team. Though I see it only supports Latin characters at the moment, which might make it unsuitable for use at State.
https://public-sans.digital.gov
https://public-sans.digital.gov
Extended Latin, including Polish, Vietnamese, etc. Useful enough. Thanks for sharing :)
I believe that font is primarily intended for interfaces rather than documents. The design decisions are quite different between those contexts, or that's what I've heard.
I wonder "how many fonts we need". Is there a good, open resource for FOSS fonts, to compare them, and preferably a curation?
I agree with others on here, though. Everything our government does, and produces, from an IT/development perspective which is not a "competitive advantage" (security, etc.) should be open. Why there would be an official directive to choose a non-open font when so many open fonts exist, is beyond me.
I agree with others on here, though. Everything our government does, and produces, from an IT/development perspective which is not a "competitive advantage" (security, etc.) should be open. Why there would be an official directive to choose a non-open font when so many open fonts exist, is beyond me.
political signal by MSFT corporate to the US citizen, we will license you the type you read each day; pay here.
What a case study in the critical importance of sensible defaults, that they could end up enforced as State Department policy.
I've wondered in the past what the cultural influence of font legibility is. I'd imagine someone who grew up reading serif fonts would feel much more comfortable reading a document with a serif typeface than someone like myself who doesn't interact much with serif fonts.
For me serif fonts look kind of off and weird. On the other hand monospaced fonts look strangely beautiful to me so I use monospaced fonts on my blog and in other personal writings. I'm guessing that preference isn't biological though, but more likely due to me spending every day reading and writing code. My brain is just best adapted for working with monospaced fonts.
I think about questions like this often when it comes to UI/UX decisions because I think some modern UI/UX is arguably objectively bad in a world where there only exists subjective users. For example, the qwerty keyboard is god awful, but does it make sense for the next Apple Macbook to ship with a dvorak keyboard layout to fix querty's UX issues? Probably not.
For me serif fonts look kind of off and weird. On the other hand monospaced fonts look strangely beautiful to me so I use monospaced fonts on my blog and in other personal writings. I'm guessing that preference isn't biological though, but more likely due to me spending every day reading and writing code. My brain is just best adapted for working with monospaced fonts.
I think about questions like this often when it comes to UI/UX decisions because I think some modern UI/UX is arguably objectively bad in a world where there only exists subjective users. For example, the qwerty keyboard is god awful, but does it make sense for the next Apple Macbook to ship with a dvorak keyboard layout to fix querty's UX issues? Probably not.
> someone who grew up reading serif fonts would feel much more comfortable reading a document with a serif typeface than someone like myself who doesn't interact much with serif fonts
I grew up reading books, so I suppose I count as someone who grew up reading serif fonts. I find sans serif fonts to be incredibly difficult to read. They only are a win for small on-screen text since there aren't enough pixels for serifs. I have a sans-serif font for my window titles. Reading more than a single paragraph in sans is fatiguing to me.
I grew up reading books, so I suppose I count as someone who grew up reading serif fonts. I find sans serif fonts to be incredibly difficult to read. They only are a win for small on-screen text since there aren't enough pixels for serifs. I have a sans-serif font for my window titles. Reading more than a single paragraph in sans is fatiguing to me.
I find any document written in serif feels more professional and well considered. As a result, when I look at older documents, it seems that the past had higher standards for content and presentation.
Seeing a Calibri memo from the state department would make me think that it’s illegitimate.
Seeing a Calibri memo from the state department would make me think that it’s illegitimate.
I am absolutely convinced that the past had higher standards for content and presentation. The choice of font faces probably is just a consequence.
It's weird because we have far better and more convenient tools for content and presentation now, but we're so lazy that we make poor use of them and so the output is worse.
Of course blame "the millennials".
Missed opportunity to transition into National Park Typeface!
I should build a VS Code theme around this...
https://nationalparktypeface.com/
As one of the very few moon dwellers who finds Calibri fucking blinding to read, I hate this. Times New Roman all day every day, or any of Arial/Tahoma/Verdana for sans serif.
I don't understand the love for Times New Roman honestly. Any type of antiqua is better if you ask me.
In Times New Roman's name, Roman is a reference to the regular or roman style (sometimes also called Antiqua)
Let me be more precise: more classicist and less cramped forms of antiqua. Palatino, Garamond are the first two that come to my mind.
It was the default font in Word for a very long time.
I spent probably half an hour figuring out how to make my Google Docs default to Times New Roman for any new docs after. It's a good font. Calibri is trash.
Even worse, a widely-used design doc template here uses a title-only font in the body. I was wondering why it's so hard to read, even for a sans serif font, until I noticed that.
Even worse, a widely-used design doc template here uses a title-only font in the body. I was wondering why it's so hard to read, even for a sans serif font, until I noticed that.
Comic Sans FTW.
Soon enough fonts will be an anachronism. We won't read things serially, we will download information into our brains via cyberneural uploads. Then we can get rid of the dead trees and petrochemicals.
Musk says it's only 5-10 years away.
/s
Musk says it's only 5-10 years away.
/s
[deleted]
I think they are conflating "serif" with "Times" Times is a very narrow font, which has all sorts of readability issues (it's very readable for the space it takes up, but damn it's narrow). I have yet to see an OCR do better on a serif font that has a bit more girth to it. In particular I see things like "III" as being impossible to read for both OCRs, and (in the absence of context) humans in sans-serif fonts.
I'd put up a nice sans typeface with single-storey "g" (the double-storey "g" is hard to read for a lot more people than one might think) against a sans-serif any day.
I'd put up a nice sans typeface with single-storey "g" (the double-storey "g" is hard to read for a lot more people than one might think) against a sans-serif any day.
But have they relaxed their policy on Comic Sans[1] since Condoleezza Rice's tenure? ;-)
https://achewood.com/index.php?date=07052007
https://achewood.com/index.php?date=07052007
To be fair, isn't basically any font better than Times?
Wasn't the whole point of Times to be legible when printed at super high speed with super cheap ink on super crappy newsprint?
If you want maximum legibility, would the solution not be a variant of Century Schoolbook which was explicitly designed to be legible?
Wasn't the whole point of Times to be legible when printed at super high speed with super cheap ink on super crappy newsprint?
If you want maximum legibility, would the solution not be a variant of Century Schoolbook which was explicitly designed to be legible?
You are right. Times Roman was not originally intended to look how it does when printed now. Originally, the thin lines spread and the pointed serifs contracted so the result looked somewhat like Century. You can see examples of this in technical books published in the 1950s-60s.
I absolutely hate Calibri. I hate that Microsoft made it the default font and now we're all left with this quirky, unbalanced font as the default.
Calibri was designed for low-res screens [1]. "De Groot created Calibri in the early 2000s, as part of a collection of fonts for enhanced screen reading. “I designed it in quite a hurry,” he says."
Even Microsoft is moving on from Calibri!
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/calibri-default-font-microsoft-m...
Even Microsoft is moving on from Calibri!
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/calibri-default-font-microsoft-m...
I’d prefer an Old English font on parchment.
Boeing uses inches. Not feet, just inches. The drafting scales (rulers) we used were in inches, but divided into tenths and hundredths of an inch. The ball bearing catalog what in inches, but rather strange values, which turned out to be mm translated to inches.
I had a hard time recently trying to find a scale in inches and tenths and hundredths. It's just easier to user. I'm kinda sorry I sold my drafting equipment.
I had a hard time recently trying to find a scale in inches and tenths and hundredths. It's just easier to user. I'm kinda sorry I sold my drafting equipment.
14 point? Does Blinken need glasses? (ignoring the obvious double entendre there).