Changing Font

[MorGrendel]

This mostly for Doug, but I thought it was interesting.

Doug, it explains why Garomund is the font of choice.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/27/living/st ... index.html

[boagrius]

I read this earlier, I thought it was great and at the same time sad. He proposed it to his local gov't and still nothing has changed. How hard is it to put out a memo to change.

[Fritz]

I know at the federal level this would be a fairly hard thing to change. There are army regulations telling me what font I'm allowed to use. Seriously. And army regulations change at a glacial pace.

[Titus]

1–17. Type fonts and sizes
When creating official correspondence, use type fonts and sizes that make the correspondence easy to read and
understand. The following guidelines will provide the best results:
a. A font with a point size of 12 is recommended.
b. Preferred type font is Arial.
c. Unusual type styles, such as Script, will not be used in official correspondence.

From AR 25-50, it says preferred, not mandated, so you could use this font if you wanted too. Also if you didn't notice it changed from Times New Roman to Arial last May.

[MorGrendel]

Arial! A san serif font.
What is this madness?
No one can read Arial, we may as well allow pink highlighters and rainbow stickers.

Somebody kick somebody into a pit.

[Fritz]

1–17. Type fonts and sizes
When creating official correspondence, use type fonts and sizes that make the correspondence easy to read and
understand. The following guidelines will provide the best results:
a. A font with a point size of 12 is recommended.
b. Preferred type font is Arial.
c. Unusual type styles, such as Script, will not be used in official correspondence.

From AR 25-50, it says preferred, not mandated, so you could use this font if you wanted too. Also if you didn't notice it changed from Times New Roman to Arial last May.

There is another reg that the S-1s use that they pull out of their ass to contridict half of everything in 25-20. Getting memoes signed by a battalion commander is usually an adventure.

[Berserker]

I like Arial. I see no problems with it. We actually use Arial a lot here. Arial is a lot simpler in structure then Garamond. Take a look at the two in Word.

Perhaps between Times New Roman and Garamond, Garamond wins, but by no means does that mean that Garamond is the type font of choice that everyone should use. He only compared 4 fonts. And ink savings is not the only thing that matters. In fact, visibility and readability is far more important. I think he's drawing unproved conclusions there by asking everyone to use Garamond at all times.

IMHO, The real savings come from going electronic so you don't have to print anything at all, or mail thing (stamps are expensive!). That has been and is the focus of the gov't overall. Did you notice that you haven't received an SSA statement in the mail in a couple years now?

[Fritz]

IMHO, The real savings come from going electronic so you don't have to print anything at all, or mail thing (stamps are expensive!). That has been and is the focus of the gov't overall. Did you notice that you haven't received an SSA statement in the mail in a couple years now?

Please don't take this personally Serban, but...

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

If you guys in the rest of the federal government are saving paper, I assure you that the Army is doing it's absolute best to make such progress null and void. The "paperless" Army is a complete myth. I would certainly be all for actually going paperless, but because things like memos have to be done in Word and we therefore don't have a way to digitally sign them, we use an unbelievable amount of paper. In addition, I'm required by regulations to keep certain things on file. I'm also hardly the only position required to do something like that. It's bad. Really bad. Sorry =/

[Titus]

In the COMSEC field I can now start using digital signatures. Just draft up the memo, use Adobe to add the digital signature block. But then, once they got that, I am required to print them out and keep them on file, so half way there.

[Berserker]

Yeah, going from ink signatures to digital has been a challenge here too. But we're doing it in a lot of places now. I blame the lawyers who keep finding ways to sue.