# Why is the dialog in comics all in upper case? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 23, 2008, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475 "2008-03-23T22:49:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2008, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/21 "2008-03-24T20:18:18Z")
Well, that would certainly explain why my comic “THE ADVENTURES OF FLICK N CLINT” never got published. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2008, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/22 "2008-03-24T20:22:40Z")
There was an old Judge Dredd strip years ago in which the writer {probably John Wagner back then} had huge fun with the uppercase taboos convention: the villain was called Slick Dickens… ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2008, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/23 "2008-03-24T21:46:15Z")
[QUOTE=Algernon] (except Pearls Before Swine, but maybe that is just the Crocs?) [/QUOTE] Yes, only the crocodiles in _Pearls Before Swine_ have mixed-case dialogue. Using a childlike scrawl and mixed-case lettering appears to be a way of showing that a character is mentally incompetent- Bill Watterson used it for the bully in _Calvin and Hobbes_, for example. Some comic books use mixed-case lettering for all of their dialogue- I believe a few DC comics do, for instance. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/24 "2008-03-25T02:05:37Z")
[QUOTE=toadspittle] Now, from personal experience, I can say that it’s in caps due to tradition. Lowercase just looks odd to me, and is only used for special effects. [/QUOTE] If I recall my childhood, and the child-friendly comics I read then, correctly, the Dennis the Menace stories in comic books (not the daily newspaper panel) used lowercase in voice balloons. The letterer even put serifs in their proper places! Must have taken forever to letter those balloons, but that’s the only place I recall seeing lowercase in comic books. ---
**Author:** ![randwill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@randwill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randwill)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/25 "2008-03-25T02:32:23Z")
[QUOTE=Spoons] If I recall my childhood, and the child-friendly comics I read then, correctly, the Dennis the Menace stories in comic books (not the daily newspaper panel) used lowercase in voice balloons. The letterer even put serifs in their proper places! Must have taken forever to letter those balloons, but that’s the only place I recall seeing lowercase in comic books. [/QUOTE] You are correct. I just pulled out a 1960’s Dennis the Menace Giant Christmas issue (ooooh, old comic book smell) and the lettering is indeed in serif style, upper and lower case. Except for the EMPHASIZED words which are larger, bolder and sans-serif. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/26 "2008-03-25T02:52:34Z")
Oh, hell, mixed case lettering for characterization was pioneered by Walt Kelly in **Pogo**. Deacon Mushrat spoke in Gothic lettering, and P.T. Bridgeport spoke in circus poster lettering. (Pogo came out a year after **Barnaby** , but the reason for mixed case was different for each.) ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/27 "2008-03-25T03:05:23Z")
[QUOTE=Spoons] If I recall my childhood, and the child-friendly comics I read then, correctly, the Dennis the Menace stories in comic books (not the daily newspaper panel) used lowercase in voice balloons. The letterer even put serifs in their proper places! [/QUOTE] The Sunday _Dennis_ strips are lettered the same way. ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/28 "2008-03-25T03:17:22Z")
Well, the fact that \*Dennis the Menace \* used mixed lettering ought to be reason enough for other comics to avoid it. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/29 "2008-03-25T03:29:55Z")
The really funny part about this thread is that in my City of Heroes Silver Age-themed Supergroup, one of the leaders goes by the name Clint. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/30 "2008-03-25T04:30:37Z")
I’m guessing one factor is that, if you write in all upper case, you don’t have descenders (the parts of the letters like g and p that stick down below the line the text rests on), so the lines of text can be closer together and you can fit them more easily into those little speech bubbles. At least, I can remember how oogy the lower case font on my old Commodore 64 looked, with descenders that didn’t really descend. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/31 "2008-03-25T05:25:11Z")
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink] I’m guessing one factor is that, if you write in all upper case, you don’t have descenders. [/QUOTE] This is a good point. And you don’t have ascenders either (the high tails on h, d, f, and so on). Upper case gives you only one height to worry about, which (and I’m speaking from experience) makes things much easier. ---
**Author:** ![Algernon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a183cd/32.png) [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/32 "2008-03-25T13:13:11Z")
[QUOTE=GuanoLad, in response to my question about what the FLICK reference means] Imagine if the poor reproduction of the comics caused the ink in the L to bleed so it joined with the I and appeared to become a U. [/QUOTE] :smack: I can be really dense sometimes. > [@msmith537](#): > > Well, that would certainly explain why my comic “THE ADVENTURES OF FLICK N CLINT” never got published. Heh, heh. > [@mobo85](#): > > Yes, only the crocodiles in Pearls Before Swine have mixed-case dialogue. Using a childlike scrawl and mixed-case lettering appears to be a way of showing that a character is mentally incompetent- Bill Watterson used it for the bully in Calvin and Hobbes, for example. That’s right! I forgot about Moe. > [@Thudlow Boink](#): > > I’m guessing one factor is that, if you write in all upper case, you don’t have descenders (the parts of the letters like g and p that stick down below the line the text rests on), so the lines of text can be closer together and you can fit them more easily into those little speech bubbles. Ah. Another good reason for using all uppercase. Never thought of that. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/33 "2008-03-25T14:42:25Z")
Once, when I was a freshman engineering student I had to take a rudimentary drafting class. When you are writing text on technical drawings and blueprints, there are a lot of rules: all capitals, no serifs, no descenders, etc. The idea was to make something that would be easy to read even if the copier shrank it, stretched it, smudged it, etc. When I finished that class, I was making a pretty good example of comic book lettering. I suspect that a lot of letterers in the comics industry were trained in architectural schools or engineering schools. ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2008, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/34 "2008-03-25T18:27:08Z")
The comic book letterers I met in the 80s at conventions (y’know, when you’re a comic book reader and actually have favorite _letterers_, y’know you’re a geek) mostly used lettering guides-- I think the main favorite was the Ames lettering guide. A straightedge and a properly adjested Ames guide lets you create the guidelines for lettering in a good range of heights. I think the Ames guide finds wide use in other disciplines, which might explain why comic lettering is so similar to drafting lettering, etc. (Some artists, notably Charles Schulz, could do it freehand…) Anyway, the letterers were workhorses, often doing all of the books for a given editor, and often working for several editors, and then lettering cards, strips and indie projects on the side, all with quick turn around-- speed was of the essence. (Again citing Schulz, one of his big breaks was that he was a fast letterer.) There were several reasons they cited for doing all caps when I asked them: All caps was quicker all around, for reasons mentioned above, like by **WotNot**. It was easier when using the Ames guide, too, since you only needed to do two guidelines. It followed convention that’s over a century old. It allowed the use of lower-case for special circumstances, like to represent technical phrases, whispering, etc. (In general, by limiting standard text to such a narrow presentation, it made story-telling by altering text that much easier for readers to get.) None of them, though, could tell me where the tradition arose of putting “foreign” speaking into \<\> brackets. ---
**Author:** ![WotNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e19b73/32.png) [@WotNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WotNot)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/35 "2008-03-26T13:08:55Z")
[QUOTE=Student Driver] (y’know, when you’re a comic book reader and actually have favorite **letterers** , y’know you’re a geek) [/QUOTE] Bob Lappan! ohwhatagiveaway ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475/36 "2008-03-26T16:03:27Z")
[QUOTE=WotNot] Bob Lappan! ohwhatagiveaway [/QUOTE] Tom Orzechowski! yeahI’mwithya [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-dialog-in-comics-all-in-upper-case/442475.md?page=1)