The Trump administration can rarely be credited with elevating debate on a matter of public interest, but the recent decision by the State Department to change typefaces for its official documents might be the exception that proves the rule.

For those who haven’t followed this issue — and with everything else going on, nobody could blame you if you didn’t — Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently issued a memo to his staff titled, “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-point Font Required for All Department Paper.”

“To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products . . . the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface,” Rubio wrote.

We doubt that the return to a more elegant typeface will by itself restore decorum and professionalism to the current State Department. One might as well put lipstick on a diplomatic pig. 

Still, tradition packs a wallop, and we are sympathetic to the argument that a classic serif typeface like Times New Roman is “more formal and professional,” in Rubio’s words, than Calibri, a sans serif typeface adopted by the State Department during the Biden administration.

(Serif typefaces are those that, like the caffeine-ladened energy drink that shall remain nameless, “give you wings” — and “feet” — at the end of characters. Sans serif ones lack those small decorative strokes at the end of letters.)

But as always with the Trump administration there’s more to the story. Sans serif typefaces are regarded as being more legible and easier to read for people with visual impairment, which is one reason why Calibri was adopted in the first place. It was also regarded as superior for legibility on digital screens.

So, its banishment by Rubio is more than an aesthetic choice. Rather, it is a part of the administration’s ongoing effort to stamp out diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which apparently extend to accessibility measures that aim to make it easier for people with disabilities to fully participate in American life. Why anyone would want to make their lives harder is beyond us.

In any case, readers of all varieties benefit when careful thought is given to how the written word appears in print and on the screens of electronic devices. As The Washington Post noted recently, “research reveals that fonts can dramatically shape” what you communicate and comprehend, and how you read. It cited a recent study indicating that picking the right font can increase reading speed on a screen by 35%.

Serif typefaces like Times New Roman and Garamond (a favorite of ours in which this editorial is being written on a Chromebook) are generally regarded as more suitable for longer text passages, while the wingless and feetless san serifs have cleaner lines and do a better job when used as titles and shorter text blocks.

That’s not all there is to legibility by any means. Much depends not only on the typeface, but also its size; the spacing between letters, known as tracking; the X height of letters, which refers to the height of a lowercase x compared with a capital X; proportion and contrast between the thick and thin part of letters; and line spacing. All these and more can make a huge difference in readability.

Adding to the complexity is that some typefaces are more easily read in print and others on a screen, so one size does not fit all. And to some extent, familiarity with a typeface can breed content.

For instance, 30 years ago or so, the Valley News undertook an in-house redesign of the paper, including type and headline faces, to freshen its appearance. Before rolling out the redesign, management assembled a focus group to assess the work. A good thing it was to do, too. As we recall, the members of that group almost uniformly hated the redesign because it was not recognizably the Valley News they knew and liked. Back to the drawing board we went.

We make the case here that choice of typeface is not just so much arcana to be debated by those initiated into its mysteries. At a time when reading and reading skills are in decline throughout American society, promoting legibility and comprehension of the written word is key to maintaining the literate public that is essential to democracy. Call it a font of knowledge.