Wherein we discuss the merits of Comic Sans

[Shit]

I used comic sans up through college.  That's what I get for asking advice from my mom on what's the best font to use for essays.

[Triple Zero]

Problems with Comic Sans:
  - it's not even "sans" (sans-serif). look at the capital "I".
  - the lowercase "a" is really ugly.
  - it was based on actual comic hand-lettering fonts, but poorly done.
  - and the worst reason is, it is theoretically a reasonable choice for usage as comic lettering (which was the original purpose of the font), but people use it for a whole lot of different reasons. there are also quite a bunch of better (in all sorts of ways) comic lettering fonts out there, not only because they look better, but also because your local community something hasn't used it on their posters. not that "someone else using it" makes a font a bad choice, but Comic Sans has a pretty recognizable shape, which makes people associate it with all sorts of random things. the "Impact" font is kind of similar but thankfully people don't write long texts with that.
 
I can understand that people just sometimes want to use a friendly, rounded and perhaps slightly less serious-looking font. Which would be fine, if only the default choice for that on every computer would not have been such a low quality font. I don't have any problem with Arial, even though there are very similar-looking fonts that are a lot more polished in very tiny details and shapes. Stuff you can't really see unless you know what you're looking for, curves, figure and ground, weight, hell I enjoy typography (I guess that's weird, but not weirder than sewing Star Wars fan suits, I think) but I wouldnt be able to point all those features out either. Still, these are the shapes and squiggles and pictures that fill entire pages and books, every shape is repeated over and over again, and that's when all those little invisible details start to count. You may not be able to tell how or why, but some very similar-looking fonts just look cleaner, neater, more readable or simply prettier than others. Sometimes it depends on the situation where they are used, but in other cases not. For example, Helvetica is almost always a better choice than Arial, for whatever purpose (so are the newer Microsoft fonts Calibri,Candara,Corbel,Verdana and Tahoma--Arial is just not very good). Think of it like craftmanship, if you have a chair, and you don't know about building chairs, some chairs just look prettier, more sturdy, and comfortable. You don't know why or how, but because of the sum of all the little details the craftsman put into this chair, it is somehow filled with quality, and if you like, love. And you can tell, even if you can't point it out.

Well that's the case for Arial, and I'm just gonna leave it at, Comic Sans is even worse.

And oh yeah, if you ever need a friendly looking round font next time, try Calibri. If you got Vista or some reasonably new MS Office, these new fonts should be installed on your system. Calibri has nice round edges, okay it doesn't look like comic book lettering, but it's designed very well. Good quality.

And if you need actual comic book lettering, well, actually in that case I'm not gonna stop you if you want to use Comic Sans, it may not be the best choice, but at least it's what it was intended for. You might wanna check if there are some prettier comic book lettering fonts available at sites such as urbanfont and dafont. Even though those are free fonts which means they are sometimes also very low quality and miss certain special characters. So yeah.

[Jean-Lustine d'Hadamard]

I remember some advice from a learning support office somewhere that Comic Sans made text easier to read for those with dyslexia (don't know what the evidence was). Action on this from those who typeset their exams with LaTeX was, to say the least, not forthcoming. Worse is the proliferation of Lucida Sans and Verdana in printed material (at the same establishment, the former was deemed the font of choice for body text in letters). Neither of these fonts seems to be designed for printing, they're optimised for the screen. Plus they're shite.

And oh yeah, if you ever need a friendly looking round font next time, try Calibri. If you got Vista or some reasonably new MS Office, these new fonts should be installed on your system. Calibri has nice round edges, okay it doesn't look like comic book lettering, but it's designed very well. Good quality.

Bah. I preferred it better when it was called "Computer Modern Sans".

[Triple Zero]

I remember some advice from a learning support office somewhere that Comic Sans made text easier to read for those with dyslexia (don't know what the evidence was). Action on this from those who typeset their exams with LaTeX was, to say the least, not forthcoming.

I'd like to see that research.

I seriously doubt that a crooked rounded sans-serif font is better readable with dyslexia than a serif like LaTeX uses.

Worse is the proliferation of Lucida Sans and Verdana in printed material (at the same establishment, the former was deemed the font of choice for body text in letters). Neither of these fonts seems to be designed for printing, they're optimised for the screen. Plus they're shite.

they are optimized for the screen indeed, however that is completely separated from how well they perform in print. because the screen optimizations (hinting etc) aren't used when printing.

also, I disagree that it is "worse". it may arguably be bad (I don't care that much myself), but not worse.

And oh yeah, if you ever need a friendly looking round font next time, try Calibri. If you got Vista or some reasonably new MS Office, these new fonts should be installed on your system. Calibri has nice round edges, okay it doesn't look like comic book lettering, but it's designed very well. Good quality.

Bah. I preferred it better when it was called "Computer Modern Sans".

?

whatever

then rename the font if it bothers you so much, I don't see what the name has to do with anything.

[rong]

is there an Erisian Liberation Font?

[MMIX]

Golgafrinchan Telephone Sanitisers, Management Consultants and Marketing executives were persuaded that the planet was under threat from an enormous mutant type face.

Welcome to Golgafrincham ladies and gentlemen, the home of simple elegance and "deep thoughts" on the relative merits of computer fonts. We are much more excited by style and presentation of  what we read  than any of that old fashioned shite like content . . .

Douglas Adams was a fucking Cassandra, a fucking Cassandra . . .

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

all fonts have their own "tone" or "voice". To me, comic sans "sounds" childish and unprofessional.

Can you imagine reading wikipedia in comic sans? It sure wouldn't feel like an encyclopedia.


Usually you see it used on bad flyers or corporate e-mails which were written by someone with no sense of style. I've always found it to be a kind of juvenile feeling font.

It is one of the most dyslexia-friendly fonts. its useful.

[Triple Zero]

We are much more excited by style and presentation of  what we read  than any of that old fashioned shite like content . . .

way to polarize, fuckhead. the topic of this thread is about fonts. yes that pretty much implies that ITT we're not going to talk much about the content written, but about its style. if you dont care about that go read some other thread.

jeez what do you care? I haven't seen you bring neither style, presentation nor content, so what is your opinion worth really?

It is one of the most dyslexia-friendly fonts. its useful.

Second time someone said this. I find this very intrigueing. I'm not casting doubt upon it, even though I always thought dyslexia makes you less sensitive to mirrored and rotated versions of letters and I'd expect a rounded font like Comic would score worse on that than a Serif font. On the other hand, maybe the slight "handwritten-ness" makes the Comic Sans just asymmetrical enough, and it does have very friendly bold round letters.

I don't have dyslexia, do you? If you do, could you try to explain what it is about Comic Sans that makes it so dyslexic friendly?

And what about very round and geometric but plain fonts such as Century Gothic or Futura? (do an image search for "futura font" if you dont know what they look like). Does the symmetry make it harder, or does the bold plain-ness make it easier?

And less "frivolous" but still rounded fonts like "Arial Rounded" and "Calibri", how about those? Especially Arial Rounded is at least as friendly-looking as comic sans (it's also really really stale, but not as much as Comic Sans :-P )

Oh and just for the sake of completeness, how about serif italics? Like for instance Times Italic? They are absolutely not symmetrical, but then even non-dyslectics have problems reading long pieces of italicized text.

As you see, yes I think fonts are interesting, and their differences in suitability for dyslectici had never really occurred to me, so if anyone can shed some light on that.

because no, if Comic Sans is indeed extra readable for dyslectics, I'm pretty sure that there must be other, better-looking fonts out there that are even more readable, and have the added bonus that their style and appearance doesn't make it look like you did not really care about the way your message is taken in

[fomenter]

i had mild dyslexia as a kid but it went away so i cant comment on how comic is better for dyslexics, but i do have 40+ year old eyes and reading on a old monitor under florescent lighting...  comic sans is a easy way to reduce the strain, its not a scientific study with citations but it does work...

[Triple Zero]

Get yourself a new monitor, please. Smaller (second hand?) flatscreens aren't that expensive anymore, anyway. It's totally worth it, better have a sharp smallish screen than a fuzzy big CRT.

Be sure to have the LCD or TFT screen run at its native resolution though, otherwise it's still fuzzy.

[fomenter]

Get yourself a new monitor, please. Smaller (second hand?) flatscreens aren't that expensive anymore, anyway. It's totally worth it, better have a sharp smallish screen than a fuzzy big CRT.

Be sure to have the LCD or TFT screen run at its native resolution though, otherwise it's still fuzzy.

office monitor at work no say over getting up grades, my home monitor is on a lap top and i can read it fine no eye strain at all (and no need for font swapping )

[Shai Hulud]

And if you need actual comic book lettering, well, actually in that case I'm not gonna stop you if you want to use Comic Sans, it may not be the best choice, but at least it's what it was intended for. You might wanna check if there are some prettier comic book lettering fonts available at sites such as urbanfont and dafont. Even though those are free fonts which means they are sometimes also very low quality and miss certain special characters. So yeah.

This.  I agree with you on pretty much everything TZ.  I would like to point out that there are a lot of free fonts out that that are really great, although a lot of them haven't got the special characters.  One of the best is a creative commons/public domain font called Gentium, looks like a more elegant version of Times, that makes a point of having all the special characters, you should check it out.

Also, good point about the serif on the "I" in Comic sans.  I think is because in comic book lettering the captial I has a serif at the beginning of sentences and in the pronoun form and is sans in all other occurrences.

is there an Erisian Liberation Font?

I think that's the one that consists entirely of squished babies.

BTW, fomenter, I dig the Midnite Bomber What Bombs at Midnite.

[fomenter]

BTW, fomenter, I dig the Midnite Bomber What Bombs at Midnite.

I'm cookin' with gas. I've gotta handful of vertebrae and a headful of mad. Yeah. That's your spinal cord. Baby. Dig it. Who's the man? I'm the man. I'm a bad man. How bad? Real bad. I'm a 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness.

[Triple Zero]

Yeah Gentium is one of the prettier fonts that comes with Linux. But not really for lettering comics, no? I'd use it for a newspaper logo or perhaps print body text.

[Shai Hulud]

Yeah Gentium is one of the prettier fonts that comes with Linux.

Wow, prepackaged Gentium?  I wasn't aware of that. Is there anything that isn't better about Linux?

But not really for lettering comics, no?

Probably, but that never stopped me.

BTW, fomenter, I dig the Midnite Bomber What Bombs at Midnite.

I'm cookin' with gas. I've gotta handful of vertebrae and a headful of mad. Yeah. That's your spinal cord. Baby. Dig it. Who's the man? I'm the man. I'm a bad man. How bad? Real bad. I'm a 12.0 on the 10.0 scale of badness.

Uh... spoon?