Arial
Shares rank 20 of 26 typefaces by recommenders
People recommend Arial as a legible, accessible sans-serif with mature hinting and locale support; critics say its letter shapes are overly simplified.
People recommend Arial as a legible, accessible sans-serif with mature hinting and locale support; critics say its letter shapes are overly simplified.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Legible and accessible sans-serif
“I would have preferred Arial for this, as it’s much more legible to me than the final bitmap font he chose.”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Making a 88x31 button book using ImageMagick” “I landed on using Arial as the font because it's arguably the most accessible.”
Comment from 1 Sep 2026 in “Restroom Archive” Mature hinting and locale support
“Times New Roman and Arial had man _years_ of hinting effort by Monotype”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes” “Arial has better support for some locales on desktop devices.”
Comment from 29 Jun 2026 in “Font-Family Recommendations”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Simplified shapes, seen as inferior
“sans-serif typefaces similar to Helvetica/Arial have remained the most widespread, which have too simplified letter shapes”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri” “Arial which is an inferior version of it.”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “A brief history of Times New Roman”
Other typefaces people recommend
The four most recommended other typefaces, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Times New Roman | 35 | 28 | 56% | 4 | — | — |
| Atkinson Hyperlegible | 23 | 2 | 92% | 6 | — | Approved |
| Shantell Sans | 19 | 1 | 95% | 2 | — | — |
| Calibri | 16 | 36 | 31% | 1 | — | — |
| ArialThis page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I would have preferred Arial for this, as it’s much more legible to me than the final bitmap font he chose.”
“I landed on using Arial as the font because it's arguably the most accessible.”
“Arial has better support for some locales on desktop devices.”
“Times New Roman and Arial had man _years_ of hinting effort by Monotype”
“extremely bad for use in computers, because they have a lot of ambiguous letters and digits”
“If you communicate in Times New Roman and Arial it tells me that you probably are apathetic about mold in the walls”
“Arial which is an inferior version of it.”
“sans-serif typefaces similar to Helvetica/Arial have remained the most widespread, which have too simplified letter shapes”
“I prefer Arial or Helvetica for sans-serif”
“Both choices are (admittedly in my very subjective opinion) better than Calibri”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.