The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Arial vs Arial Nova
Two Monotype sans-serifs from the same lineage: Arial, the 1982 neo-grotesque that became a Windows core font in 1992, and Arial Nova, the 2015 redesign Robin Nicholas led to bring the family back to its original drawings. They look nearly alike at a glance, but Arial is the metric-compatible workhorse everyone has, while Nova is a refined, better-spaced revision with more weights and widths.
Arial is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Arimo, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Arial → Arial Nova is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Arimo, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Arial Nova →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Arial is metrically compatible with Helvetica, so documents reflow identically when the two are swapped; Arial Nova's character spacing was adjusted and does not match Arial's.
- Arial Nova adds Light and Condensed styles (12 styles in total), whereas the core Arial family bundled with Windows ships only Regular, Bold and their italics.
- Monotype describes Arial Nova as smoother and more elegant for extended text, with 'understated modifications' that undo constraints of 1980s laser-printer typesetting.
- Arial covers Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian, Hebrew and Arabic in its Windows build, while Arial Nova is limited to Latin, Greek and Cyrillic.
- Both are commercial: Arial ships on every Windows and macOS install, but Arial Nova is only an optional Windows 10/11 'Pan-European Supplemental Fonts' pack, Office cloud font or Adobe Fonts item, and web or app embedding for either requires a paid Monotype license.
Arial
Reach for Arial when you need a safe, universally installed default that matches Helvetica metrics and renders the same on every machine.
Arial Nova
Reach for Arial Nova for long-form documents and print where its refined spacing, Light weight and Condensed widths pay off, provided your readers' systems have the font or you budget for the Monotype license.