to hate people who defend C*m*c S*ans with no facts

[tokyonambu]

So, the BBC have another article, linking to bancomicsans, giving the highlights of the objections to the typographic cancer of our times. In the comments, Louise, a teacher from the West Midlands (hi!) writes:

As a teacher Comic Sans is an easy to read font, especially for pupils with learning difficulties as it is the only font to use a 'hand writing style' letter a.

(My bold).

The only font, eh? Well, I'm not sure why an "a" with a simple downstroke is the sine qua non of easy reading, nor that you shouldn't aim for people to be able to read common fonts. But it's not true anyway: Century Gothic, or, if we want something everyone has seen Futura. Which is now used for Ikea catalogues, hence its ubiquity.

There are plenty of reasons to ignore Comic Sans snobs, although I confess there was a time when I had my email filters set to automatically discard any message that used it on the grounds that it was probably from an idiot. But please, find a better excuse than "I think fonts should have this magic property and it's the only one".

"Check out Arnold Wilkins' publication record. "

One might, say, look in JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING 32 (4): 402-412 NOV 2009 - suitable journal, nice and up to date - and consider Typography for children may be inappropriately designed, by Wilkins, A et al.

"We present four studies indicating that the size and design of the typeface in textual material for children aged 7-9 may impair speed of reading and comprehension, and measurement of reading attainment. The first study compared the speed with which sample sentences were comprehended. The sentences were printed in Arial font with an x-height of 4.2 or 5.0 mm. The sentences were verified 9% more quickly when presented in the larger typeface. The second study compared reading age on the Salford Sentence Reading Test when the typeface remained at the initial size (x-height 3.3 mm) throughout the test, and when it decreased in size as usual. The average reading age measured with the larger font was 4 months older. The final studies compared the font Sassoon Primary with the font Verdana and showed that Verdana was read and searched more quickly."

How odd. The primary teachers' other favourite loses.

Nice! I hadn't seen that one, but it's good.

I was thinking of his work on TNR being bad, which is also interesting.

Presumably Wilkins, A.J., Smith, J., Willison, C.K., Beare, T., Boyd, A., Hardy, G. et al. (2007). ^Stripes within words affect
reading^. Perception, 36(12), 1788?1803. Which makes some claims about Times New Roman, but posits Verdana as an alternative.

But it's also worth looking at Serifs, sans serifs and infant characters in children's reading books by Sue Walker and Linda Reynolds of Reading (!) University, Information Design Journal, Volume 11, Number 3, 2003 , pp. 106-122(17). The abstract for that is (my emphasis):

"This paper describes part of the work of the Typographic Design for Children project at The University of Reading. The aim was to ¦nd out whether children found serif or sans serif types easier or more difficult to read, and whether they found text with infant characters (e.g. variants of a' and g') easier or more difficult to read. We listened to 6-year-old children reading in a classroom, using specially designed, high quality test material set in Gill Sans and Century with and without infant characters. We also asked children for their views about the typefaces used. We used miscue analysis to study tapes of children's reading to see whether more errors occurred in text set in a particular typeface. The substitution category of miscue was explored in more depth to see whether differences were attributable to typeface. The results show that children in our test group could read text set in Gill and Century equally well."

I'm not a psychologist, but these all look like very small scale, inherently unblinded, subjective trials. Most of the "stripes" trials are on university students, too, who are not exactly a representative audience, although section nine talks about children identified by children as having general literacy difficulties (which doesn't narrow it down much).

children identified by teachers, that is.

I am seriously impressed that anyone knows how to block e mails based on font.
Which probably marks me out as a Comic Sans user straight away.

Ooh, thanks toyko, that looks very useful!

It is a really persistent problem I've found that some psychology papers describe (apologies to psychologists if I've got this wrong!) incredibly poorly set-up tests.

But then what do you expect from the discipline in which a woman who doesn't understand the purpose of a hypothesis, can become a professor?

I'm interested in the idea that teachers need a typeface/font that supports the children in learning to write. What no-one has mentioned is that the best model for learning to write is to actually watch someone writing.

Unfortunately, good handwriting is a skill that teachers are no longer expected to have, and one that has, in any case, been stifled due to the take-over by interactive whiteboards, which are impossible to write on well.

At the risk of sounding utterly ancient, I taught my classes to write using chalk. They wrote on black sugar paper (or directly onto their wooden desks when the paper ran out) and I wrote on my beautiful blackboard, which was the perfect surface due to the friction created. I was able to demonstrate any writing style necessary, from stick and ball to cursive, and would use the 'school style' for all my writing on the board. The children had that model all day long to look at, watch it being created, and copy.

I just don't understand how children are expected to extrapolate from the overwhelming quantity of print that surrounds them how to actually form letters.

Don't get me wrong, I do think the whiteboard has its place (and I trained most of the teachers in our authority in its use when they started being widely used), but I would always advocate using a good model of handwriting alongside the printed word. Unfortunately, many schools now see handwritten signs/labels as a sign of weakness on the teacher's part, as if they aren't able or willing to 'use the computer'. I find this very sad and detrimental, and one of the things that is wrong with education .

Sorry to butt in to a great thread with an off-the-wall comment, but it really gets to me!

That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about it from the writing side but it makes a lot of sense.

Does the friction/sugar paper help just because it slows you down, or because you can feel the movement better?

Can anyone remember the Ladybird Key Word Readers? What font did they have? I seem to remember something sans serif-ish... [yes, I'm that old emoticon]

Amstillsexy -- great post. I agree.

I just googled about that Ladybird font (so gorgeous) and found this thread

amistillsexy that is a really interesting post. I deplore the lack of 'copying from the board' in school - I think it teaches all sorts of skills but sadly now is seen as a redundant activity and horrid photocopied worksheets seem to be the norm instead.

FWIW a friend teaches graphic design at secondary level, has taught for 42 years, is a complete computer enthusiast but refuses to get rid of the blackboard in his classroom. It's still how he lectures his classes and presents the work for the day. You are not alone :)

"FWIW a friend teaches graphic design at secondary level, has taught for 42 years, is a complete computer enthusiast but refuses to get rid of the blackboard"

Adrian Newey has a drawing board in his office, not a CAD computer. He seems to have been quite successful, overall.

I have no idea as to the efficacy of Ladybird fonts, but as Ladybird books make me weep silently for my lost childhood, I assume they must be good.

amistillsexy chalk and sugarpaper feature a lot in Lois Addy's Speed Up remedial writing programme.

Thank you so much Sunfunandmum! I think it's the playful untidiness of Cmc S*ns that makes me grind my teeth when I see it in schools. Sassoon Infant (the closest thing to the Ladybird font, which was hand lettered apparently) is so neat by contrast, even elegant.

Although.... [hhmm]

Also not a fan of comic sans or TNR.

We have to use Verdana at work which just gives slightly too wide letter spacing for me tastes.

Normally I use Trebuchet but quite keen on Frutiger now I've had a look, thanks. :)

Yes, LittleRed, both the fact that the friction slows you down, and that it helps you to really 'feel' what you're doing. It's really important, IMO, to include the kinaesthetic when introducing something new to children.
If you've ever written on an IWB you'll know what I mean-the felt pen 'slides' across the surface so that you can't make the strokes you intend to (it's like trying to walk on ice!).
JenaiMwahHaHaHaaaaah (great name!), thanks for the link to Speed Up. I really should have written my own book when I had the chance!!!
I myself (ironically!), have a 7 YO DS who's handwriting looks like something the cat dragged in (combination of Asperger's, dyspraxia and dyslexia with a hefty dose of bloody mindedness!), and am desparate for something he will actually do on a regular basis to help him imrove.
Looks like this will be my latest waste of money purchase!
Sorry, Tokyonambu, Thread-Hijack over! [hsmile]

Thanks ami! I avoid whiteboards - dyslexic/dyspraxic so not my best teaching aid by some way. But thanks for the tip about the sugar paper.

Btw - you've got a 7-year-old dyslexic/dyspraxic (don't know what the Aspergers brings to this, but that's plenty), who has handwriting?! Smart boy!

Both my brothers have the crappiest handwriting you've seen (my little brother still writes like a 5-year-old, big scrawly letters), and it doesn't seem to have disadvantaged them much! The good thing is that they're really hard to copy off, so were automatically excluded whenever there was a plagiarism row.

Glad to hear that about your brothers, LittleRed. Btw, the only thing the Asperger's brings into this is that it makes him so Bldy Minded! He knows what he wnats his story to say, and if anyone else wants to hear it, he can tell them, so why should he write it down?

A fair point, I feel.

Mum used occasionally to get annoyed with school and hand in work that my brother had dictated and she'd written down, just to demonstrate that he wasn't actually dim, just had a mechanical problem.

I must ask him if anyone ever got him writing on whiteboards/special paper.