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".

Arial all the way here. Just because it's default.

I'm secretly wondering how you block emails in a particular font though

True fontsnobs use Verdana. Though that trend might have passed by the time I've finished typing this comment.

I don't think I'd even notice if something was in a different font to normal, that's how little I care.

What an odd thing to get wound up about

You strange strange people.

highlights how serious it is

Some people are loons. I can't say that Comic Sans has ever offended me or affected me in a negative way.

It is a font. Get. Over. It

Good god, are we to be judged by and judge fonts now? Some people are fucking weird with too much time on their hands!

Think I'll write everything in Wingdings from now on, just to piss people off.

Incidentally, at college we were told to print/type all our work in Arial (size 10) as it was the 'standard'

I'm with you tokyo. Makes me shudder. That's what art college does for you

This is hysterical to hate a font borderline madness.

Primary schools use it and Reading schemes because it makes more sense when teaching phonemes. I met rosemary sasoon of the font but it's not as wildly available.

My inner teenager loves the fact I can now annoy so many people by using it. Brilliant

Our playgroup uses comic sans, nuff said.

I'm an Arial Narrow 12 point girl myself having graduated from Times New Roman.

I do like saying 'sans serif', it rolls off the tongue and makes me think I work in advertising [hgrin]

I think its funny that it winds people up so much, I have just completed two qualifications and did all my written work in comic sans. About 6000 luverly comic sans words LOL.

Why all the asterisks in the header? Is it like some sort of swear word for you OP?

I thought it was a reference to David and Samantha Cameron to being with [hgrin]

Is Arial O.K. ?

"Primary schools use it and Reading schemes because it makes more sense when teaching phonemes."

Do expand on how a font can make more sense when teaching phonemes.

"Is Arial O.K. ?"

In the same way that Tesco jeans are OK. They do the job, but there's something missing, isn't there? Helvetica may be bland, but at least it has heritage. Arial is just a testimony to Microsoft being too cheap to ship fonts they have to pay for. After all, why pay for Helvetica when your in-house people can knock up Comic Sans and a bloke down the road has got Arial going cheap?

.. as I suspected. Still cannot find it in myself to give a toss though

I use arial too JamieLeeCurtis

Even Dave Gibbons whos comic lettering was the inspiration for it hates it!

And anyway, if we are going for handwriting font, Justlefthand is much more like handwriting.

PS, I use Verdana [hblush] Should I be thoroughly ashamed of myself?

I'd object more to this: "As a teacher Comic Sans is an easy to read font". Have the cuts gone so deep our children are now being taught by fonts?

We're told to use Arial for E&D/accessibility reasons.