Microsoft Sans Serif is a

TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating ...

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

introduced with early Windows versions. It is the successor of MS Sans Serif (formerly Helv), a proportional bitmap font introduced in

Windows 1.0 Windows 1.0 is the first major release of Microsoft Windows, a family of graphical operating systems for personal computers developed by Microsoft. It was first released to manufacturing in the United States on November 20, 1985, while the Europ ...

. Both fonts are very similar in design to

Arial Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software appli ...

and

Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s ...

. This font was made to match the MS Sans bitmap included in the early releases of Microsoft Windows.

History

Microsoft Sans Serif's predecessor is Helv (a shortened form of Helvetica), a bitmap font included with Windows 1.0 and later. In

Windows 3.1 Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a shell on top of MS-DOS. Codenamed Janus, Windows 3. ...

, the bitmap font was renamed MS Sans Serif. "Helv" is still a valid alias for MS Sans Serif.

OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 re ...

and its successor ArcaOS still name the font "Helv". MS Sans Serif is the default system font on

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...

Windows NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retai ...

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released t ...

, and

Windows ME Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Win ...

. A

Euro The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens ...

symbol was added to this font for the release of Windows 98. MS Sans Serif is available in the font sizes 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, and 24. When changing the DPI settings in Windows 95 or later, Windows loads a different MS Sans Serif font, historically called the "

8514 IBM 8514 is a graphics card manufactured by IBM and introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of personal computers in 1987. It supports a display resolution of pixels with 256 colors at 43.5 Hz (interlaced), or at 60 Hz ( non-interlaced). ...

" variant, which adds sizes 23 and 30 points (high DPI versions of sizes 18 and 24 respectively). Also, according to the strings hidden in the .FON file (on the original raster/bitmap variant), it is seen that the font was designed by Microsoft Corporation in 1987 (font sizes 8, 10, 12 and also a portion of the 8514/a version), also in 1985 by Xiphias, Los Angeles, CA (font sizes 14, 18, 24), also the 8514 version contains typefaces designed by Bitstream Inc. in 1989.

Description

Microsoft Sans Serif is a TrueType font that is designed as a vectorized, metric-compatible variant of MS Sans Serif, distributed with Windows 2000 and later. This font also contains most glyphs shipped with any version of Windows until

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

, excluding fonts supporting East Asian ideographs. The

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug B ...

font name is MicrosoftSansSerif. Despite being a vectorized replacement, there are subtle design changes. For example, the tail in the lowercase "a" is shortened to a vertical stem in Microsoft Sans Serif, the top of the stem on the lowercase "f" curves down instead of horizontally, the hook at the descenders of "y" and "j" are hooked up in Microsoft Sans Serif, the strokes in the middle of digit "8" intersect at a different angle. Capital R, which was designed in the style of original Helvetica in the original MS Sans Serif, is instead a compromise between Helvetica and the straight-diagonal descender in Arial; the descender curves at the top and is a straight diagonal at the bottom. Version 1.10 of the font includes 1119 glyphs (1209 characters, 26 blocks), supporting

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...

ranges Alphabetic Presentation forms, Arabic, Arabic Presentation forms A-B, Cyrillic, General Punctuation, Greek and

Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet, t ...

, Hebrew, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Latin Extended Additional, Mathematical Operators, Thai. Supported code pages include 1250-1258, Macintosh US Roman, 874, 864, 862, 708. Font is smoothed at 0-6 points, hinted at 7-14 points, hinted and smoothed at 15 and above points.

OpenType OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...

features includes init, isol, medi, fina, liga for default Arabic script. Version 1.41 (supplied with Windows XP SP2) includes 2257 glyphs (2301 characters, 28 blocks), which extended Unicode ranges to include Combining Diacritical Marks, Currency Symbols, Cyrillic Supplement, Geometric Shapes, Greek Extended, IPA Extensions, Number Forms, Spacing Modifier Letters. New OpenType scripts include Arabic MAR script. Additional OpenType features includes rlig for Arabic scripts. Version 5.00 (supplied with Windows Vista and

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on F ...

) includes 3053 glyphs (2788 characters, 36 blocks), which extended Unicode ranges to include Arabic Supplement, Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement, Combining Half Marks, Latin Extended-C, Latin Extended-D, Phonetic Extensions, Phonetic Extensions Supplement, Specials, Superscripts and Subscripts. New OpenType scripts include Arabic URD (Urdu), Cyrillic (default), Hebrew (default), Latin (default, Romanian), Thai (default). Additional OpenType features includes ccmp, mark, mkmk for Arabic scripts; locl for Arabic URD (Urdu) script; mark, mkmk for default Cyrillic; dlig, ccmp, mark for default Hebrew; ccmp, mark, mkmk for Latin scripts; locl for Romanian Latin; ccmp, mark, mkmk for Thai. MS Sans Serif was given a PANOSE number that indicates it has "cove" serifs, While the PANOSE number for Microsoft Sans Serif indicates that is a sans serif. Glyphs from Microsoft Sans Serif are also used in the typeface Kartika.

Non-Microsoft operating systems

On October 16, 2007, Apple announced on their website that the next version of

Mac OS X v10.5 Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and is available in t ...

("Leopard"), would include Microsoft Sans Serif. Leopard also ships wit
several other
previously Microsoft-only fonts, including Tahoma, Arial Unicode, and

Wingdings Wingdings is a series of dingbat fonts that render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Cert ...

. Microsoft Sans Serif has been included with all

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...

versions since. Retail versions of the font are sold through Ascender Corporation.

References

External links

Microsoft's entry on Microsoft Sans Serif
{{Microsoft Windows Typefaces Microsoft typefaces Windows XP typefaces Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces Computer-related introductions in 1985 Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1992 Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1997