Maybe I'm focusing on minor details, but Arial has never seemed like a dead ringer for Helvetica to me. Or at least no more than, say, Franklin Gothic and Helve

Maybe I'm focusing on minor details, but Arial has never seemed like a dead ringer for Helvetica to me. Or at least no more than, say, Franklin Gothic and Helvetica are the same font. There are some clear differences in letterforms that give the fonts a somewhat different feel, at least to me. Having said that, regardless of the differences in execution, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that some Product Manager at Microsoft said "Make me something that looks like Helvetica", and the result was Arial.