Trebuchet MS

Category	Sans-serif
Classifications	Humanist sans-serif
Designer(s)	Vincent Connare
Foundry	Microsoft Corporation
Date released	1996

Examples of distinguishing characteristics

Trebuchet MS is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare for the Microsoft Corporation in 1996. It is named after the trebuchet, a medieval siege engine. The name was inspired by a puzzle question that Vincent Connare heard within Microsoft headquarters. The question was "can you make a trebuchet that could launch a person from main campus to the new consumer campus about a mile away? Mathematically, is it possible and how?" and Mr. Connare "thought that would be a great name for a font that launches words across the Internet".

Distinguishing characteristics

Trebuchet MS distinguishes itself from other common sans-serif typefaces through several characteristics, the most notable of which include:

• The splayed edges of the uppercase M which form a 10° angle with a vertical line,
• The shape of the tail of the uppercase Q,
• The bar of the capital A is low,
• The shortened tails of the lowercase e and the numerals 6 and 9,
• The hybrid open and looped tail of the lowercase g,
• The rounded dots above and the shapes of the lowercase i and j,
• The curved tail beneath the lowercase l,
• The dollar sign symbol, in which the vertical strike only appears above the top and below the bottom curves of the S,
• The ampersand in the form of an "Et" ligature and
• The exclamation point, whose dot is large and round.
• Italic fonts incorporate italic type characteristics instead of just tilting roman glyphs, making it the first sans serif font family from Microsoft to use true italic features.

Microsoft refers to Trebuchet MS as "a good web design font", being one of their "Core fonts for the Web". Trebuchet MS is included with several products, including the Windows operating system, components of the Office productivity suite, and Internet Explorer. It is the default typeface for title bars in Windows XP (when using the default Luna theme: for Windows Classic, either Tahoma or Microsoft Sans Serif are commonly used).

In some versions of the font (those shipped with Windows 2000 and early versions of Internet Explorer), the opening quotation mark character was flipped vertically. This error was fixed in later versions.[1]

Trebuchet MS has been released with the Microsoft Windows operating system since Microsoft Windows 2000. The typeface has been released with Internet Explorer since version 4.0 and Microsoft Word since Word 2000.

External links

• the Microsoft typography website
• Trebuchet MS font information (Microsoft typography)
• Trebuchet Nation, a short article describing the evolution of Trebuchet MS (Microsoft typography)