Comic Sans Got the Last Laugh 57
On July 4, 2012, CERN physicist Fabiola Gianotti announced a major quantum field theory discovery using a PowerPoint presentation in Comic Sans, sparking both mockery and debate. The font, created by Vincent Connare for Microsoft Bob in 1994, featured deliberately imperfect letters inspired by comic books. Comic Sans shipped with Windows 95 and exploded in popularity as personal computing democratized typography. A backlash emerged as the font appeared on everything from funeral notices to museum signs, culminating in Dave and Holly Combs's "Ban Comic Sans" campaign.
"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED", but in a dumb font (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED", but in a dumb font (Score:2)
Re:"MISSION ACCOMPLISHED", but in a dumb font (Score:2)
I plan on stipulating in my will that my funeral program be printed in Comic Sans. Fuck you font Nazis!
Dyslexia (Score:2)
Soup Kitchens (Score:5, Insightful)
Kudos to the physicist for doing real work and not wasting everybody's time with nonsense.
The rest of them should be feeding the homeless if they have so much extra time on their hands.
Hear me out ... (Score:5, Informative)
.... I've actually seen one place where a similar handwriting font is used and it is OK. Before you get your pitchforks:
The awesome indie game Terraria uses a font based on Andy (typeface) [wikipedia.org] for its UI and it is perfectly fine. (Apparently Pokemon game cartridges also use it according to the Wiki.)
The problem is 99% of the time time it shouldn't be used; clueless people don't understand why they aren't being taken seriously.
A good rule-of-thumb is:
* Sans Serif for Screens
* Serif for Print
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:1)
I prefer san serif fonts for everything. Judging people by whether their letters have serifs is the weirdest sort of Sneetch-think.
Re: Hear me out ... (Score:2)
It's not really a matter of judging people (shouldn't be, anyway).
There are typographic 'rules' and principles that are there to make text clear, communicative and representative of a message or messenger.
One doesn't think an architect snooty for designing a workmanlike building (not an art piece) well. Do you imagine the architect gets by without rules and principles?
Re: Hear me out ... (Score:0)
Do you imagine that serifs make letters more readable (only on paper)?
The Emperor has no clothes on.
Re: Hear me out ... (Score:2)
That's what the science says. Though it's based on pre-4k sub-pixel rendering. My guess is serifs are also better in very high resolution digital media. But if you're choosing fonts for a website (99% of the time, websites are the target), then you can't rely on high resolution, so you should generally go sans-serif.
Re: Hear me out ... (Score:3)
A link to the science, which itself has several useful papers cited. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
TLDR; Serifs don't make much difference, but a serif font can (in some circumstances).
Re: Hear me out ... (Score:2)
I would also concur. I've found that with high DPI displays (300+ DPI) a serif font doesn't hinder readability, on low DPI displays (100- DPI) a serif font it does.
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:4, Funny)
I actually saw something similar where it was actually well composed visually. Then I worked with an engineer who would write reports with it...
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:2)
Twenty years ago, I walked into a web developer job where the website had been done 100% with Comic Sans... guess what my first order of business was?
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:3)
and a monospaced font for numbers...
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:2)
Arial has monospaced numbers.
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:3)
They probably do get, they probably just don't care, and if it annoys someone who does all the better. What do think the response is going to be when you call them clueless?
Frankly if you want to pick a more important script related issue they should have forced doctors to print instead of using cursive, anyway I think the prescriptions I get now are printed.
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:2)
The prescriptions I get now are emailed.
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:0)
>an informal font was used on a video game
Well yeah. There's bound to be places for things casual, or infantile, or crude.
Indeed, to be taken seriously ...to sell something, to demonstrate a better grasp of sensibility than rivals, to have greater appeal whatever the peanut gallery may claim, there is value in decorum. Per frosty piss this does have no bearing on the raw science, but that goal was pursued in the lab. A different goal is pursued when telling others to walking up to the podium because you want to present something, because you have requested an audience, to which you have organized and arranged and curated and unshittified most carefully for that goal. You have dressed it up. You literally dress up.
And yes, scientists are sometimes not the best at dressing up, they often don't desire that podium-showmanship goal in the first place, they can't be assed they don't care they just wanna work. They aren't guilty of a shitty presentation if forced into it ...so naturally you have a rep present it. So you spend money/manhours in pursuit of an X-factor that does exist and does have value within certain arenas. Not everyone has to bother entering them, or even be good at them. But the arenas exist nonetheless.
Re:Hear me out ... (Score:2)
So yeah, Comic Sans has legitimate applications. It's also useful for, you know, web comics and such. Obviously.
wait a decade (Score:3)
This is a new slashdot article on news that was reported 12 years ago?
This has to be a dupe
Re:wait a decade (Score:2)
That is quite a backlog.
Re:wait a decade (Score:4, Insightful)
I think they forgot to include the story in the summary. The headline sounds like there's news, while the summary sounds like the setup to a punchline that isn't there.
I don't get it. (Score:5, Funny)
The subject says "Comic Sans Got the Last Laugh", but there's nothing alluding to why in the summary. And the 2nd link in the summary goes to this very same Slashdot page, thus it's a circular link. Am I missing something?
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
The comedy?
Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Funny)
Should have made the summary render in Comic Sans.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
"I'm writing in a font beyond her range of reading!"
Re:I don't get it. (Score:2)
Re: I don't get it. (Score:2)
So... literally (Score:4, Funny)
announced a major quantum field theory discovery ... in Comic Sans
Comic Sans is a font of knowledge. :-)
Re: So... literally (Score:1)
The Cavs' owner rates a mention here (Score:1)
When LeBron James left for Miami in 2010, owner Dan Gilbert of the Cleveland Cavaliers wrote a sort of jilted-owner open letter missive in which he described the "cowardly betrayal" by James. That letter was in Comic Sans MS.
If memory serves, Gilbert described how the Cavaliers would win a championship before LeBron... Who, on his return a few years later, led the franchise to its sole championship. Whether that amounts to Comic Sans winning out in the end, I doubt. LBJ had won already in Miami. (Shrug.)
Re:The Cavs' owner rates a mention here (Score:3)
LBJ had won already in Miami. (Shrug.)
Was that before or after his term as President?
People care too much (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a font. If it's legible to the average person, who the hell actually cares about swash and serif? People in graphic design, who probably imagine other people care when generally we really, really don't.
Re: People care too much (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think designers care so much what you think of Comic Sans.
I think they care about clarity, legibility and the underlying message the font is sending.
Something most non-designers aren't aware of is the many tiny differences between fonts for print and fonts for display. Print fonts are calibrated for things like laser print dot gain and offset ink spread, kerned differently for placement in a book vs. in a logo or on the side of a building. Often different fonts are used when the font is lighter than the background vs. the opposite, to keep the text legible.
The democratization of typesetting means anyone can do it, but not that everyone can do it well, no more than having a Home Depot credit card makes one a homebuilder.
Designers care that it's done well. Not what you think, and don't expect you to know all the minutae.
Re: People care too much (Score:2, Troll)
Uh huh. Pull the other one. I've worked with those people and watched them agonize over which font to use when most people can't tell the difference if you swap 'em out with everything else being equal. And I've seen them INSIST on purchasing a specific font because none of the ones packaged with their OS will do.
It's just... stupid. Proportional spaced vs. monospaced, I get. Terminal vs. something with rounded edges I get. Occasionally something silly like a 'handwriting' look or a gothic font. But for the most part if you're worrying about Arial vs. Montserrat you are worrying about something that very few people have the capacity to care less about.
Re: People care too much (Score:2)
Uh huh. Pull the other one. I've worked with those people and watched them agonize over which font to use when most people can't tell the difference if you swap 'em out with everything else being equal. And I've seen them INSIST on purchasing a specific font because none of the ones packaged with their OS will do.
It's just... stupid. Proportional spaced vs. monospaced, I get. Terminal vs. something with rounded edges I get. Occasionally something silly like a 'handwriting' look or a gothic font. But for the most part if you're worrying about Arial vs. Montserrat you are worrying about something that very few people have the capacity to care less about.
I think I understand your sentiment, the font you use for an average Word doc should not matter.
On the other hand, when painting the interior of your house, you do not go to Home Depot and ask for "white paint". Everybody knows this.
If you painted the walls, cabinets, trim and doors "white", and bought "white" tiles, that's a great way to get divorced, and best of luck selling it.
There are times to pay attention to little details and times not to. Is the precise color of your bathroom special, or the exact way "Slashdot" is stylized at the top left of this page? No, but if you fuck it up everyone will notice, and if you're selling it, going beyond not fucking up helps.
Re: People care too much (Score:1)
When in reality NOBODY SANE CARES, because it doesn't matter.
50 years ago, your choices were monospaced typewriter fonts or whatever was in the linotype machine. And today, nobody who isn't an obsessive compulsive idiot has any interest in the "many tiny differences" because they're utterly irrelevant.
"Doing it well" just means it's readable. If it's readable, it's been done well.
Re:People care too much (Score:2)
It's a font. If it's legible to the average person, who the hell actually cares about swash and serif? People in graphic design, who probably imagine other people care when generally we really, really don't.
Scroll through Netflix and look at the titles, the ones in the cover art. Or a bookshelf if you have one. If those were all the same font you'd scratch your eyes out. That's graphic design. It's one of those things you don't appreciate when it's done right and smacks you in the face when it's wrong. Try making a little texture for a bookshelf in a video game that doesn't look a stack of engine repair manuals.
Really this applies to any kind of design. When it's right you don't pay attention, and when it's wrong you say gross, a Cybertruck. /caranalogy
Re:People care too much (Score:2)
Used to know some kids who used to pass messages by changing the font to Wingdings before sending, and then the recipient would change it to something readable.
I use it at work (Score:2)
I made my chat font Comic Sans because I think it's funny that the "Supreme Allied Linux Commander" for our organization (me) uses Comic Sans on Skype For Business. Keeps 'em on their toes.
Undeserved bad rap (Score:5, Informative)
Comic Sans gets a bad rap for the wrong reasons, and by now it is just a fashionable trope to derogate or make fun of it.
It was issued early in 1994, when Win 3.11 was still the flagship product. This is when, just a couple of years earlier, MS and Windows added vector fonts, Truetype, to the system. You can rehash history talking about Apple & MS and others who contributed to Truetype, and the merits or not of Truetype versus then-king of vector fonts Adobe with its PostScript and Type 1 technologies. What matters is that vector fonts prevailed, and it is a huge bonus to typography, design, art, and the universal utility of computers.
When MS issued its first set of vector .ttf fonts, 1992 as I recall, under Win 3.1, it carried on necessary standards of classical typography adapted to electronic technologies, with the special distinction that these were scale-independent wysiwyg types rather than bitmap fonts which were the only option prior to that. Standard fonts were Time New Roman, Arial, Courier, Symbol, Wingdings - i.e. the rudimentary basic typographic necessities to get your ideas and visions on paper with little effort. They also offered a FontPack which had many more, many of which were classic designs licensed from venerable foundries, logical choices to really bring vector fonts and Truetype to life, sell people on the idea, and give users some diversity in their typography.
Windows 95 changed things by including a set of standard fonts that MS created that would be the system defaults for serif, sans serif, monospaced, etc. These were Times New Roman, Arial, Courier. But the Win 95 distro included a variety of others that allowed not just diversity of serifs and sans serifs, but diversity of cultural, historical, artistic typefaces - types for many typographic purposes. These include the "fun font" Comic Sans.
For many people who understood computers or were fascinated to learn and adopt, the new fonts and wysiwyg publishing were a joy to play with. For others not so "into it", not nerds or computer savvy, instead just learning to use computers as a necessity of work or doing tasks at home, the font list offered choices, and who doesn't like choices? It was all like kids in a candy shop. And, if you weren't knowledgeable or savvy about typography, who cared what font you chose. If Comic Sans or anything else tickled your fancy, use it.
Typography, printing, and fonts are not just arts but instruments of communication and civilization since circa 1550. Done well, the reader is unaware of how much proper type facilitates reading and gives an aura of "feel good" to what you are reading. For the professional printers and typographers, it is the very essence of their work to make type meet those standards. But, even crappy or silly fonts can be readable, so PC's have given us the latitude to create both memorable inspiring printworks along with mundane throwaway paperwork and ephemera that nobody cares they look crappy because they could and did read it and that's all that was needed.
So, if Professor Neutron wants to publish "Quantifying a Quart of Quantum Qubits" in Comic Sans, that's his prerogative. If he publishes on his blog or at a meeting in Powerpoint, he can use what he wants. But, I suspect that Professor Neutron was himself one of those people not aware of or into fonts and typography, so used what tickled his fancy - hell, maybe he didn't even know how to change fonts - without having the same discriminating care for the quality of his presentation as he did for his research work. Which is okay. Of course, printed by a bona fide publisher, it is going to be printed in a proper font for respectable and archival typography.
Note too that this 2024 report is about a PPT presentation 2012 (so, why are they reporting it now - who cares?). Perhaps Professor Neutron has by now adjusted his taste, from Ripple to a fine Cabernet of typography, or maybe he has learned to change the font that his wife or kids default to.
Re:Undeserved bad rap (Score:2)
Very informative. Needs modding up.
But I agree with others that Comic Sans gives a feel of utter casualness to the text and should be restricted to only comic strips and the like. While I am just a user of fonts, I intrinsically appreciate the big difference fonts create how on our impression of content. The analogy is design of a package for a product - the more attractive a package, the more weight (value) we implicitly attach to the product.
Re:Undeserved bad rap (Score:2)
Yes, exactly. Fonts dress up your text for the occasion.
The issue is not just pedantic. If someone gets up at a prestigious professional convention to deliver a paper, and if he is just wearing his underwear, or is dressed in a clown suit and clown wig, and punctuates his remarks by squeaking on a kazoo, he and his presentation lose credibility. Regardless the substance of the talk, if the presentation is incongruous and distracting, it gets laughs and disrespect or loses interest, all for the wrong reasons. A silly incongruous out of place typeface will have the same effect. Imagine the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, an invitation to the king's coronation, your college diploma, a Tom Clancy novel, an anthology of Victorian era epic poetry, Shakespeare or Homeric stories, your physics textbook - all printed in Comic Sans or some graffiti or grunge typeface. Those documents in that form would be hard to read, and would lose all sense of seriousness or credibility.
Comic Sans is casual, comicky, fun for kids. Other fonts for other purposes.
Thanks for the reply.
I don't suppose we could learn... (Score:1)
Re:I don't suppose we could learn... (Score:5, Informative)
In conventional typography, with cast metal or wood carved types, a typeface is the design, the art, and a font is a collection of sorts in a given size.
Sorts are characters, called "sorts" because metal sorts needed to be sorted into the bins in their typecase. A full font would typically have upper case (capitals, majuscules), lower case (minuscules), punctuation, numerals, "points" (various typographic symbols), and spaces and quadrats (shims that governed spacing between letters). Each font was just one size of a typeface. Classic size names for fonts were, for example, nonpareil, minion, brevier, bourgeois, primer, pica, english, paragon, and many others. The modern point system, now standard, where a point is one 72nd of an inch, debuted in 1879. Type foundries then gradually replaced classical font sizes with new fonts sized in points. But, no matter the sizing system, a font was a specific type size of a particular typeface, with all of the characters included. They were usually sold by weight, by the pound, with so many pounds of "lead type" (type metal was an alloy of lead-tin-antimony) having such and such number of sorts for the different characters.
In modern times, the meaning of font has changed. In digital typography, a font is a file with vector outlines or pixel bitmaps. For bitmap fonts, there can be a separate file for each size (in the spirit of conventional metal fonts), or all sizes can be combined in one font, depending on the file extension format. For vector fonts like type 1, ttf, otf, the vector outlines allow the characters to be drawn at any arbitrary size and always look correct.
A typeface is the design. Times Roman is a specific style of classic roman serif type. Garamond, Baskerville, Caslon, etc. - they are all classic metal serifs from centuries gone by, classics that still look and set beautifully, which is why they have been rendered into digital format. Although they are all serifs, they have nuanced differences that give them each a different look and mojo when printed. Each is a different typeface. Whether serif, sans serif, monospaced, "modern", "grunge", "circus", "victorian". "faux foreign", "comic book", "handwriting", "script", etc., any individual design or artistry of the letters is a typeface.
In hot metal days, a font was an order of a specific typeface in a specific size. In digital times, a font is a file with one specific typeface that can be rendered in arbitrary sizes.
Re:I don't suppose we could learn... (Score:2)
Thanks for articulating the differene so clearly.
Re:I don't suppose we could learn... (Score:2)
Re:I don't suppose we could learn... (Score:2)
Wow. Hadn't seen that one before. Excellent.
Thanks for your kindness in pointing that out.
FTFY (Score:2)
Microsoft BOB got the last laugh.
Comic sans as psych test (Score:3)
"Hey, did you hear? They found who organized the murder on John S. Kenedy!". "You mean John F. Kenedy?"
"Yes that one, of course, sorry.".
"Of course? John S. Kenedy is a totally different person. It is important to get it right. There are a lot of Kenedys. It could be an unknown individual or THE John F. Kenedy, it changes the entire story."
"Sure, but they found his killer".
"The killer of S. Kenedy or F. Kenedy?"
"F KENEDY"
"No need to raise your voice, are you sure that you have the correct name, because you are sloppy with names?"
...
This comment would be better in comic sans.
Remarks that it is KeNNedy incomming in 5... 4... 2... 1...
Re:Comic sans as psych test (Score:1)
I'll play your game, you rogue! --SNL
Re:Comic sans as psych test (Score:2)
Re:Comic sans as psych test (Score:2)
Here's the article that should be linked (Score:2)
Well Hello there, Slashdot AI (Score:2)
Was it written by a bot? This is the Comic Sans of Slashdot posts. Just useless. And yes, I am wasting my time to complain about it. If no one complains about the enshitification of the world, AI will think it's OK and feed us more.
CERN to switch to Comic Sans (src: home.cern) (Score:2)
> 1 April, 2014
> Former ATLAS spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti announces the change to Comic Sans
you all have been had.
https://home.cern/news/news/ce... [home.cern]