Fix your typography in 5 minutes

Gary Bandy

19 Dec 2025 — 1 min read

The US State Department just switched from Calibri back to Times New Roman.

Neither font is particularly good for reading on a screen. (Times is good for a newspaper, though.)

But the bigger issue is this: font choice is only one small part of making documents readable.

I see finance reports every week that use decent fonts but still look terrible. Dense paragraphs. Tight line spacing. Justified text with awkward gaps. Lines that stretch across the entire page.

The result? Documents that are hard to read and look unprofessional.

Good typography isn't about picking the "right" font. It's about getting four settings right: font size, line spacing, alignment and line length.

Most people get at least two of them wrong.

I've put together a short slideshow that shows you the setting values you need to fix the typography in your documents in under 5 minutes.

No design degree needed. Just practical adjustments that work.

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Use the Minto Pyramid when you write reports

Answer these 3 questions in your introduction

The AI revolution isn't your problem.

Don't let AI replace your thinking