Tahoma (typeface)

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Categories: Humanist sans-serif typefaces | Microsoft typefaces | Windows XP typefaces

For other uses, see Tahoma.



Typeface	Tahoma
Category	Sans-serif
Designer(s)	Matthew Carter
Foundry	Carter & Cone

Tahoma is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for the Microsoft Corporation in 1994 with initial distribution along with Verdana for Windows 95.

Tahoma is very similar to Verdana but with a narrower body, less generous counters, tighter letterspacing, and a more complete Unicode character set. Designed from the start as a bitmap rather than outlines, the bold weight is heavy. Being based upon a double pixel width the bold weight is more similar to a heavy or black weight.

The font typeface contains a grave design flaw: The left double quotation mark (“, Unicode U+201C) is tilted to the left, making the font unsuitable for German and some other European languages.

Though often compared with the humanist sans-serif typeface Frutiger, in an interview with Daniel Will-Harris, Matthew Carter acknowledges some similarities with his earlier typeface Bell Centennial. ^[1]

It is also the default screen font used by Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 (replacing MS Sans Serif) and is also used for Sega's Dreamcast and social network Facebook. Bundled for inclusion in the font library of Windows, the typeface is widely used as an alternative to Arial.

Bundling on non-Microsoft operating systems

On October 16, 2007, Apple announced on their website that Tahoma would be bundled with the next version of their flagship operating system, Mac OS X v10.5 ("Leopard"). Leopard also shipped with several other previously Microsoft-only fonts, including Microsoft Sans Serif, Arial Unicode, and Wingdings.