Archive for January, 2006

Sterling Hicks, et al.


2006
01.27

Junk e-mail just keeps getting better. Recently I have had the honor to receive tantalizing offers of fame, fortune, and anatomical enhancement from the following persons of undetermined sex:

Reproduces S. Died,
Overdose K. Emotive,
Herminia Bullock,
and the doyen of them all, Sterling Hicks.

R.I.P.

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Font non grata


2006
01.07

In a sign that no matter is too small to affect international diplomacy, the US State Department has issued an edict banning its longtime standard typeface from all official correspondence and replacing it with a “more modern” font.

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 [2004].

“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.

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.

The memorandum offered no explanation for the exceptions, leaving foreign service officers to speculate as to whether the White House, US treaty partners and telegram readers are not yet able to handle the change.

― AFP via Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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