# People who use the Comic Sans MS font **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 30, 2000, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373 "2000-08-30T18:11:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![anya\_marie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@anya\_marie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anya_marie)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2000, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/41 "2000-09-03T11:01:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jello \* > \*\*The most blatant misuse of Comic Sans that I’ve seen was last week, when a student that recently graduated from my school killed himself. The school printed a note to the students about it in Comic Sans. How insensitive is that??? \*\* now that is extremely wrong! quite a few of the chain letter i get are in that font, and that is why i hate it. dreck, and bullshit like “how to get a date with your crush” “why guys like girls” “why girls like guys”. feh, horrible! :wally :wally and now on to a bigger issue \ what do you think when people send messages in all lower-caps? as opposed to normally capitalizing tezt, or in tHiS CyBertyPE ? ---
**Author:** ![bluecanary](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bluecanary/32/3614_2.png) [@bluecanary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluecanary)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2000, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/42 "2000-09-03T11:55:06Z")
Comic Sans seems to be the best font for worksheets for teaching people the forms of letters for handwriting. Other fonts tend to have a computerised ‘a’ especially, and sometimes a computer ‘g’ too. The q still isn’t quite a handwriting q though. Does anyone know of a better font for this purpose ---
**Author:** ![PammySPY](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d6d6ee/32.png) [@PammySPY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PammySPY)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2000, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/43 "2000-09-03T15:25:16Z")
haha! i am just lmao here. cause i too hate that frickin font! it’s so…happy or somethin, i dunno. all i gotta say is VERDANA! or courier new! ---
**Author:** ![iampunha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/74df32/32.png) [@iampunha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iampunha)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2000, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/44 "2000-09-03T17:35:27Z")
IJ: script? ---
**Author:** ![Torgo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@Torgo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Torgo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2000, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/45 "2000-09-03T19:45:15Z")
> [@](#): > > Well screw you all! I use Comic Sans in my instant messages and I like it I suppose this is what it would be like to IM with a character from “Peanuts”… ---
**Author:** ![Phouchg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/41988e/32.png) [@Phouchg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phouchg)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2000, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/46 "2000-09-03T20:57:03Z")
KJ wrote: Heittenschweiler(sp?), all the way! ## Mostly because it’s just a cool sounding name! Actually, my favorite font name has to be: Berthold Akzidenz-Grotesk Say it slowly with an evil laugh and an evil German accent. Phouchg ---
**Author:** ![bluecanary](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bluecanary/32/3614_2.png) [@bluecanary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluecanary)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2000, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/47 "2000-09-03T22:34:56Z")
We tried that but the versions we looked at were too fancy for a beginner writer. I meant “printing letters by hand” when I said handwriting Sorry 'bout that. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/48 "2000-09-04T07:34:30Z")
There is more to font selection than just ‘it looks good to me’, which seems to be the standard most people apply. Back before everyone and his dog could change fonts willy-nilly at a whim, there used to be expert typographers who actually spent a lot of effort designing and choosing appropriate fonts for various uses. Any of you who aspire to be professional designers (web pages, company manuals, whatever) would do well to learn some formal typographic theory. For example, if you have a high-resolution output, (laser printer, as opposed to screen resolutions), you should almost always use a serif font for body text. Serifs are on fonts for a reason - they help the eye scan from word to word and make it a lot less fatiguing to read long passages. Web pages are different in that the screen resolution is often too low to display serifs cleanly, so many web pages use a sans-serif font like Arial for body text. Also, most web pages have short articles, so the ease-of-reading aspect is not as critical. Never use fonts that draw attention to themselves rather than the information they represent. My idea of perfect font selection is one in which the reader never notices the font at all. To my way of thinking, the information on my web page is what is important, and not its presentation. This doesn’t apply to company logos, some headlines, and other textual material that has to draw the eye’s attention. Verdana is an excellent web font for small print. It was designed specifically for that use. It uses thick stroke widths and angles that don’t create a lot of aliasing problems on low-res screens. It’s not a great choice for applications where you have the resolution to use other fonts, but it does a great job on 72 DPI screens. If you come to an interview at my company with a portfolio of web pages full of patterned backgrounds, ransom-note font choices, animated logos, blinking text, or other major design errors, it’ll be a really short interview. If you use flash on a web page, it’s not going to matter how ‘cool’ it is - if you can’t answer basic questions as to why you’re forcing the user to download a plug-in, and forcing the web page owner to pay double for content changes, you’ll fail the interview. If your web page is over 50K in size, be prepared to answer some tough questions about your choice in graphics, and the business need for that size. Sorry for the rant - I just fielded several interviews with some people applying for professional web design positions who clearly had never even cracked a book on the basics of design. Oh yeah, this is the pit… FARGING SCUMBAG ICEHOLES, ALL OF THEM! ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/49 "2000-09-04T14:17:08Z")
dhanson, I thank you, and my eyes thank you. I am SO tired of straining my eyes on some of the web pages that I come across. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/50 "2000-09-04T14:37:31Z")
There are _other_ websites? :o ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/51 "2000-09-04T14:41:07Z")
**dhanson** has it: plain serif font for body text, plain font without for headings. Anything else is a wank (unless you don’t want people to read the body text for some reason). ---
**Author:** ![KJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b2d939/32.png) [@KJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KJ)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/52 "2000-09-04T15:05:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by mattk \* > \*\* > > What is it with web designers (or anyone sending documents by email, for that matter) expecting _me_ to have a system that matches all their settings? > > \*\* mattk: Tell these people about the second parameter of the HTML \ tag. It’s very useful, and since I discovered it, I’ve been using it all the time. Take my webpage, for instance (\ [http://www.stas.net/kinkajoy/](http://www.stas.net/kinkajoy/) \). On the section headers, the title is in a different font (but the text, thankfully, is in an easy-to-read Arial font. =) and the HTML goes like this: > [@](#): > > \ **Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/53 "2000-09-04T16:45:10Z") Agreed, **KJ** , but a lack of consideration for other readers is, I reckon, the side-effect of DIY HTML editors. ---
**Author:** ![Kid\_Gilligan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kid\_Gilligan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kid_Gilligan)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2000, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373/54 "2000-09-04T16:59:34Z")
I used to hate the Frugal Gourmet. He made such a big deal about using fresh herbs over dried. As if to say that people who used dried herbs were lower than pond scum. The truth was that some of us have lives and go to the grocery store only occasionally and don’t wish to spend an hour shopping for fresh ingredients for every meal. Cooking was his life. It’s not necessarily ours. The problem was not suggesting we TRY fresh herbs, but that he implied we were cretins if we used the dried variety. The same is true here. Not that the font isn’t annoying. But to imply that people who use a crummy font in their IM’s are neanderthals. Some of us have better things to do in our lives. So you are a design pro, and live this stuff all day. Don’t expect us to give a crap about it, though, ok. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-who-use-the-comic-sans-ms-font/31373.md?page=2)