I recently watched the film Helvetica, and have since been irritating my wife with my newly enhanced font-spotting skills. And, also, with lame jokes like ‘if you see only one film about a font this year, let it be Helvetica’. And, “I saw Courier Oblique last year. It sucked.”

It reminded me, though, of what an ugly, cheap-looking font Arial is. Arial, the most ubiquitous font on the web, was borne of cheapness, when Microsoft refused to license Helvetica for the windows operating system, and instead created a knockoff. As a consequence, I’ve tried to stop using Arial on this site. If you don’t have any other good sans-serif fonts on your computer, you may still see site content displayed in Arial. Otherwise, it’ll be in the more readable and aesthetically pleasing Helvetica.

Can you tell the difference? Try this quiz: Arial or Helvetica.

Feeling resentful? Battle it out in Arial Versus Helvetica.