Am I the only one who is sick to death of the “cute” Comic Sans MS font? I’ve seen it everywhere, in e-mails, on web pages, even printed on flyers and newsletters.
STOP USING IT, PEOPLE! You’re not being original, and it looks really immature and amateurish. ARGH!
Since it’s a Microsoft-created font, I’m tempted to blame them, but I’m not flaming the font, but the people who use it.
GO FELCH YOURSELVES!
If you want to use something other than Times New Roman or a Courier font, try Arial. It’s “untraditional” since it’s sans-serif and easy to read, to boot. Comic Sans is not easy to read, unless you like reading the handwriting of a child for paragraphs at a time.
The most egregious use of that font I’ve been subjected to yet was when a manager of mine took about 100 pages of documentation I’d written for accounting procedures and changed the damn font to comic sans ms. I wasn’t sure whether to be more pissed about that, or about the fact that she took my name off and inserted her own as author.
For some bizarre reason, my system has decided that when you copy text out of the “view” window in the document manager software and paste it into Word, the correct font is comic sans ms. If you think it looks stupid when used to be “cute” in an email, you should see it for paragraphs of boilerplate legalese…
lucie, maybe your boss actually had some kind of Word problem and didn’t know how to change it back, in addition to having problems defining personal boundaries.
I’m getting sick of that font. My sister uses it in everything she makes. Ugh. I used to use it for small sections of my webpage (<shameless plug>http://www.stas.net/kinkajoy/</shameless plug> ) until I realized “Hey, you know what? THIS LOOKS STUPID!”
Oh, and I was also doing lettering work for a comic that I drew and scanned, so I used Comic sans MS. That’s about the only place where I’d recommend it.
BTW, lucie, re: your manager replacing your name on the document; is that legal? If I were to do something like that in school, I’d get suspended/expelled! But then again, maybe you should be happy that your name isn’t associated with 100 pages of accounting documentation written in that goofy font.
It does look childish. That is why I use it on the one site I use it on. http://fathom.org/nicky/ my almost-five-year-old’s homepage.
I agree that it gets old, and it’s misused a lot. And why does everyone seem to feel that it should always be BOLD? Grr. The one that really pisses me off, though, is …um… Algerian? Is that the pointy one that’s an outline font, and it’s small caps? GRR. It’s impossible to read except at headline sizes, yet people put their entire fucking page text in it!
I second Montfort on using Arial as an alternative. I use Arial nearly exclusively for my office’s newsletter as well as other locally developed sales collaterals. THe company as a whole uses Arial as well as other similar sans-serif fonts such as Helvetica, Advance and a couple of others. Very easy to read and professional-looking.
I agree, the Comic Sans MS font is annoying. I frequently encounter coworkers professional correspondence in this font, they might as well use a crayon grasped in their fist. These same individuals recognize the need to wear professional attire for their positions, I just can’t understand why they choose to use this font.
Well, I like it and use it a lot for work…but I teach Kindergarten, so it’s appropriate. I use it to make nametags and worksheets and for labeling in the classroom. I also occasionally do my parent newsletters with it.
I do agree, though, in a business setting, you are better off with Times Roman or Ariel. Keep it simple, especially for something with lots and lots of text.
I also have a word processing business on the side (brochures, newsletters, reports, etc.) and use whatever is appropriate for each project. I have about 300 fonts in my Windows folder and over 500 stored on a CD.
I used Comic Sans once on a post card mailing my office was doing-- I chose it because we were trying to play up the informal nature of the event we were advertising. Now I’m as sick of it as the rest of you are, 'cause for a while after that, my boss (who is a wonderful lady, but was unaware that there were fonts beyond Times New Roman) adopted it as her favorite. She would recommend it every time anyone had invitations to do or an event to promote.
I like Garamond too, kelli-- switched to that for a lot of the documents I do.
Hear, hear, Montfort. Comic sans is way too overused. Good only for kiddie pages and ::gasp:: comics.
I use Arial for nearly everything. AIM, browser default, my own homepage, etc. I’m not a big fan of serifs fonts either, but that’s just me. I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince the entire book-publishing industry to quit using Times.
Trebuchet is a good sans-serifs font, too. My second choice.
Well screw you all! I use Comic Sans in my instant messages and I like it. (Ok, I don’t use it in letters, presentations, mail or anything else, nor have I even seen it elsewhere, if I did I’d be sick of it too.) The font that REALLY chaps my hinder is *#%@)@)& Copperplate…which for around 3 years straight was used in every ad campaign, brochure, newspaper and commercial. It’s finally died down, thank god. Talk about a space waster!
