Whatever you choose to believe, you most likely use Arial everyday without thinking about it much.

if Arial is a rip-off of Helvetica, then Helvetica is a rip-off of Akzidenz Grotesk or we could simply say that they are both rip-offs of earlier Grotesque faces.

After all, imitation is the best form of flattery. The two font families I never ever use are Helvetica and Times. Helvetica is one of the most popular and well-known sans serif typefaces in the world ever since its inception in 1957. While I agree that Helvetica is far superior, in most instances it is not the best idea to use it on the web. Because Arial is only a cheap, typographically inferior copy of Helvetica, and Helvetica is common enough by now so that one can actually reference it-Helvetica is, indeed, one of the Mac OS system fonts. For the professional the answer may seem obvious, Arial is a knockoff of Helvetica. There are literally thousands of sans serif typefaces out there. In absolutely all situations I would choose Helvetica over Arial.

Typically served with a side of white rice that's best dumped into the . the browser displays the text in Helvetica Narrow, if available, or Arial.