What is "tahoma"

Tahoma is a humanist sans-serif typeface that Matthew Carter designed for Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft first distributed it, along with Carter's Verdana, as a standard font in the initial release of Windows 95.

While similar to Verdana, Tahoma has a narrower body, smaller counters, much tighter letter spacing, and a more complete Unicode character set. Carter first designed Tahoma as a bitmap font, then "carefully wrapped" TrueType outlines around those bitmaps. Carter based the bold weight on a double pixel width, rendering it closer to a heavy or black weight. In contrast with some other sans-serif typefaces, including Arial, the uppercase "I" (eye) is distinguishable from lowercase "l" (ell), which is especially important in technical publications. Since 2010, Ascender Corporation has offered italic and small caps versions of Tahoma.

Tahoma is often compared with Frutiger, another humanist sans-serif typeface. In an interview by Daniel Will-Harris, Carter acknowledged that Tahoma has some similarities with his earlier Bell Centennial typeface.

The Tahoma typeface family was named after the Native American name for the stratovolcano Mount Rainier (Mount Tahoma), which is a prominent feature of the southern landscape around the Seattle metropolitan area.

Tahoma is the original form of the word "Tacoma", as in the city of Tacoma, Washington. It can refer to:

Places:

• Mount Tahoma, an alternative spelling of Mount Tacoma, the original name of Mount Rainier in the Cascade Range
  • Little Tahoma Peak, a satellite peak of Mount Rainier
  • Tahoma Glacier, a glacier on Mount Rainier
  • South Tahoma Glacier, a glacier on Mount Rainier
• Mount Tahoma High School, a high school in the district of Tacoma, Washington
• Tahoma, California, a town on the west shore of Lake Tahoe
• Tahoma National Cemetery, a cemetery in Kent, Washington
• Tahoma School District, a school district in Maple Valley, Washington
  • Tahoma Senior High School, a senior high school in this district
• Lake Tahoma, a lake in western North Carolina

Computing:

• Tahoma (typeface), a typeface bundled with Microsoft Windows

Transport:

• Air Tahoma, an American cargo-based airline
• USS Tahoma (1861), a steamer acquired by the Union Navy during the American Civil War
• USCGC Tahoma (WPG-80), a United States Coast Guard cutter completed in 1934
• USCGC Tahoma (WMEC-908), a United States Coast Guard medium endurance cutter commissioned in 1988