Highway Gothic

Highway Gothic (formally known as the FHWA Series fonts or the Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs) is a sans-serif typeface developed by the United States Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and used for road signage in the Americas, including the U.S., Canada, Latin America and some Caribbean countries, as well as in Asian countries influenced by American signage practices, including the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Variants, major and minor, but not the exact U.S. typeface, are used in countries like Turkey, Mexico, Australia (AS1744 fonts), Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, New Zealand, Macau (written in Portuguese), and some signs in countries like India and Saudi Arabia, when written in English. The typefaces were developed to maximize legibility at a distance and at high speed. Computer typeface versions, known as Highway Gothic or Interstate, a separate typeface, which are for sale to the general public, include punctuation marks based on a rectangular shape. On signage, the official FHWA Series punctuation is based on a circular shape.

The typeface consists of six fonts: "A" (the narrowest), "B", "C", "D", "E", "E(M)" (a modified version of "E" with wider strokes), and "F" (the widest). The typeface originally included only uppercase letters, with the exception of "E(M)", which was used on large expressway and freeway guide signs.