helvetica is not for body copy

i bet you think you’re slick when you set helvetica before arial as the default font for your website… even on the body tag. people probably even think you have a very sophisticated sense of web typography.

but guess what? you just look like an idiot. helvetica was made for PRINTING. and arial was made for DISPLAYS. helvetica is really only acceptable on a website at sizes of 16px or greater. otherwise, it doesn’t scale down well on the screen. oh- and it looks like crap on windows in firefox. however, arial was based off a different typeface and had adjustments made to help it render better across multiple resolutions and displays.

to understand this concept better, please observe the difference between your monitor and a piece of paper. if you need more information, see this and this.

brendn noted:

Arial was actually designed for laser printers, and its x-height and letter spacing is virtually identical to Helvetica. Microsoft commissioned Matthew Carter to design screen fonts, and he came up with Verdana and Georgia (among others).

yes, initially. that wasn’t really relevant to my point as it was recreated (and modified) at a later time for use on displays under the name sonoran sans, later to become arial. the letter-spacing may be really close, but helvetica is known for having letter-spacing issues when rendered in a browser. see this.