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".

Just looked up Frutiger - I like it. I'd never used Segoe either but that's very nice too. I just do not get how people can claim that they don't care about fonts

No, in this case it doesn't depend on your handwriting as primary children are all taught the same shape (although it is an assumption that the teacher in the quote is a primary one)

As it happens, my a is one like this font :)

I'm a sucker for fonts. I have far too many.

All I meant was, it looked like handwriting once. I know it doesn't now (another argument against Comic Sans). I just wanted to mention it because I used to wonder why on earth fonts looked so 'artificial' - and of course, they don't really, they just look a bit like the very old scripts they're based on.

Ok will explain some more. Reading schemes books and schools use this font because the a and g are more like the printed ones. Yes there are probably hundreds of fonts that also have this quality. But most teachers really do not have the time to research that.
It's quite a leap for children make when they realise that these arbitrary marks on a page correspond with the noises that come out of their mouths. If it looks the same as the letters they are taught to write this makes the links clearer. I attended a lecture by rosemary sassoon about this but it was many years ago. Now many people think teaching cursive from day one is better and that is rarely reflected in the books they read. But that's the reasoning behind it.

Sorry about my grammar to the poster who sniggered. I left out a few words as am using an iPod touch and I hate it. I thought the sense was still clear but obviously not to some.

Obviously design is important but sometimes clarity is more so. I used to work in a graphics depArtment and was very entertained by font arguments.

handwritten letters tend be formed in one stroke without lifting the pen, for speed, (barring things like cross bars and dots etc) To do the a's like the two fonts in the OP you'd have to do a c I

Unless you work in a travel agent where you have to have that big round writing. Why do they all write the same??

i spent 7 years doing calligraphy so I'm a bit of a lettering freak :o

What did Gill Sans do then, to be a very bad man? [hhmm]

and calligraphic lettering will have been done with an edged pen which you have to lift up from the paper to form the strokes. You can't push the nib across the paper like you can with a modern pen, you can only make pulling strokes. hence old style letters are made of several separate strokes.

[happy sigh]

That's a good point reup. Shame that they're not exactly the same throughout (the font in books and the handwriting children are taught), but with luck, someone will come along and design something soon.

soup - I'm so jealous! I'm a very beginner calligrapher, I would love to be able to do it well. It's so beautiful.

Mind you, in the scripts on which lots of old fonts are ultimately based, you don't form most letters in one stroke. In fact, it looks as if the really posh script that was around just before print took off (which, of course, was the one printers copied to make their work look posh), wasn't meant to be written or read slowly. The slowness of it was a mark of how posh a person you were - you could afford to pay for a scribe to write slowly and you had enough leisure time to read slowly.

But I digress, because I am slightly insane from too much writing trying to write-up my last chapter on reading script.

Cross-post, we both said the same thing!

Is that where the f and s confusion came in? I did used to know but have forgotten.

Yes, it is. There are scripts in which f and s are identical (though, to be fair, there are also plenty of pre-print scripts where they are distinct).

Sarah - he had sex with his sister and his dog, and sexually abused his children.

:o

One day I'll get back to it. I stopped pre-children but they are all at school now.

Ewwww [hsad]

Ive just had an epiphany! There are people in the aorld who have sadder lives than me!

Guilty as charged!

It pays the bills.

LittleRedPumpkin - I am reeling with your revelation that you are an art historian who doesn't care about the beauty of fonts.

I'm not that sure beauty comes into it with Comic Sans!

I do love pretty writing but I'm more into trying to work out how the visual properties make you read the whole text.

Sorry if I disappoint you though.

"OTOH the use of comic sans is a perfect indicator of a total mouth-breather."

That sentence has totally made my day.

I preferred Garamond for most of my academic work and I'm also partial to Verdana and a little Helvetica. But the latter feels a bit 90s to me now.

I think we could all be BFF.

ooh, LRD, are you talking anglicana? That can be very lovely. Secretary, otoh, is a bugger.

Yes, secretary always looks unbalanced somehow.

I'm working with anglicana atm, but I started off looking at textura and that's when I got into the comparisons with Times New Roman and so on. Nice stuff.

They let you take photos in the Bodleian these days, which is really nice as it means I can do script work and MN at the same time!

Have you ever MN'd from the Bodleian? It was a happy day when they introduced ethernet points at the desks.

Secretary v often bloody unreadable, and most of my mss were low status books, so consequently even more drunken spider-like.

What about news gothic mt? Just been using it today and I think I quite like it.

Yes - DH is a nice place to do it, but they've moved the manuscripts to the science library basement temporarily, and if I get on MN there I feel a bit exposed!

I love drunken-spider books - but I don't love the time it takes decoding them! (I failed palaeography first time round. )