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Verdana

Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype.

About Verdana

Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group and commissioned by Steve Ballmer. The name "Verdana" is derived from "verdant" (green) and "Ana" (the name of Howlett's eldest daughter). Bearing similarities to humanist sans-serif typefaces such as Frutiger, Verdana was designed to be readable at small sizes on the low-resolution computer screens of the period. Like many designs of this type, Verdana has a large x-height (tall lower-case characters), with wider proportions and looser letter-spacing than on print-orientated designs like Helvetica.

From the Wikipedia article “Verdana”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Using Verdana in a book

Test this typeface at both text and display sizes before committing; print a sample page at final size.

Commercial typefaces require a licence that covers embedding in PDFs and ebooks; check the foundry's licence before you publish.

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