Comic Sans font

[EmeraldGirl]

This is from another post from the K-8 Board of annoying things about curriculums. Can someone please set me straight? Why is tihs font so laughable in the professional world, or otherwise? I feel so uninformed :confused:

 

And yes, I use it a lot, so now I am really paranoid :001_huh:

[cathmom]

I'm no help - I never even heard of it until I read that thread. I guess I don't like it since I never chose to use it even though my computer has it (I checked after reading that thread!)

[ereks mom]

Comic Sans, The Font Everyone Loves to Hate

[Murphy101]

I was always told told the only professional who should use anything other than Ariel font 12 are those being paid to use something other than standard -graphic artist, web designers.. And even they use Ariel 12 for professional communication.

 

Don't use text jargon or smileys to convey emotion either.

 

I love the very clear and simple style of comic sans and I use it for lots of stuff for that reason and also the print style /a/ and /g/. I thinkthosr last two letters are why it is do over used, ESP in curriculum/children's materials.

 

But I never use anything other than Ariel font 12 for business communication or other serious communications.

[Wheres Toto]

I worked for an Ad Agency and we weren't allowed to use it because it is considered too casual and unprofessional.

 

I use it all the time now because I think it works well for young kids - it's easy to read, looks "friendly" (my son's description) and looks the way handwritten letters look. Someone mentioned Century Gothic as also having letters formed like handwritten. This wasn't a good font for my son since the lines are much straighter and formal. He would try matching them exactly and get very frustrated. He found the Comic Sans much easier to copy to his satisfaction (maybe its purely a mental thing, I don't know).

 

Comic Sans

Century Gothic

[Jean in Newcastle]

Personally, it depends on how big the font is. When Comic Sans is small (like in someone's signature line:)) it doesn't bother me. But when it is bigger then it looks like everything is a comic strip.

[nmoira]

 

Personally, it depends on how big the font is. When Comic Sans is small (like in someone's signature line:)) it doesn't bother me. But when it is bigger then it looks like everything is a comic strip.

I use it in my signature because it is easy to read when tiny. IMHO, it should almost never be used otherwise. It sounds silly, but I have a hard time taking anything seriously in Comic Sans.

[SonshineLearner]

Bummer!! Now I know why people don't email me back! It's the FONT!!

 

:D

[milovany]

I'd never heard of this thought on Comic Sans before. I know that in the work I do (classroom transcription for hearing impaired students), we use Comic Sans on both computers -- the one one which I type on and the one on which the students read -- because of it's high ease readability. It's known to be one of the easiest on the eyes when there's lots of screen-reading going on. It's the one recommended by the software manufacturer for our transcription program. I love it for that, although I don't use it much for other things.

[Heather in WI]

I don't like Comic Sans, but at least it's not Papyrus! ARGH!!!!!

[BikeBookBread]

When I was in the marketing department of a large high-tech company, we stuck with seraphed fonts (seraphed fonts have "nubs" on the ends -- like Times etc...) for long passages of text, "white papers", technical writing pieces, etc. as it was thought that seraphed fonts were easier for the eyes and brain to process, and clean, non-seraphed fonts (arial is most-common, but we used an expensive, purchased non-seraphed font) for high-impact, advertising-type purposes.

 

I think that comic sans is used for kids' pubs because it is thought to be "kid friendly" and casual -- like a comic strip, hence the name comic, and sans, as it is non-seraphed. I don't think that large (don't shoot me, but "mainstream") publishing houses would ever use comic sans for any type of textbook or curriculum. Not sure why independent and smaller publishers allow it.