← Journal17 / 23

Production

What the Default Was For

·7 min in full, in the book·PagePerfect Journal

Also available as a typeset book

A new document in Word for Microsoft 365 opens in Aptos, the face Microsoft commissioned from Steve Matteson to replace Calibri as its default Office font.1 The choice was made once, for every document the program will ever open, from memos and invoices to agendas and a novel in progress. Its job is to make an unspecified document look reasonable, and a book is a document somebody ought to specify.

The rest of this essay is in the book

It goes on to cover:

  • Three numbers that are on no Microsoft page
  • The face was drawn for a screen
  • What the measurements do not cover
  • Fifty milliseconds of appeal
  • The blank line and where it came from
  • What the saving depends on
  • What the tools already do
  • Change the paragraph before the face

About the book

Notes

  1. Microsoft n.d., Overview; paragraph beginning “Type designer Steve Matteson designed Aptos for Microsoft”; Microsoft n.d., Windows tab, opening sentence; the Applies To list. We read both Microsoft pages on 16 September 2026. Microsoft names the family and states a line spacing of 1.15 with a blank line between paragraphs; it publishes no point size and no space-after value. The 1.08 of the February draft is contradicted by the current page, and the 8 pt is on no Microsoft page we read. Evidence A: strong or direct evidence.

Sources

Further reading