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".

Gill Sans was lovely until it got hijacked by the "Keep calm" brigade. I actually prefer the London Underground typeface "transport".

In the olden days at art college when I was taught metal galley setting, we were told if we ever used OLDE ENGLISH in caps we would be immediately thrown off the course.

Vulgar - apparently the underground font came first and then Gill pinched it and tweaked it and renamed it. Is there no end to his villainy!

I thought I was a reasonably intelligent, educated, and interesting person but this week Mumsnet has taught me the error of my ways. I call the room our sofa is in a the front room and I use comic sans when advertising our toddler group.

I am scum.

I can't type either. What's the random 'a' about?

I bought sassoon infant just for me (well, for children's birthday party invitations, etc, etc, but for my personal use) because I hate comic sans but wanted a "child-friendly" font. I am glad to report that the DC's school clearly understand, as displays, etc are done in Sassoon Infant, and letters to parents in Times New Roman.

I want a job where I can justify buying fonts which I can then use for home stuff.

Maybe if the font had been comic sans I would have been able to read it and corrected myself accordingly.

Shirley, I know. I used Mandy as that is the type of name a person who uses Comic Sans would have.

Genuis thread.. LOL@Comic Sans inciting violence and being the font of fools It's dire and should clearly be used sparingly, at arms lengths and supervised by an adult. As a school trustee I now feel compelled to ensure it's not used in our school or I shall call an emergency committee meeting.

I love this thread.

I loathe Comic Sans (and would completely judge any adult professional who used it in correspondence etc).

Am currently a calibri girl, but am a slight font slut.

psychommead I think the font mumsnet uses is Verdana (well that's what it looks like on my screen).

vulgar The underground font is called Johnston, after the Mr Johnston who designed it. Sometimes apparantly it goes under the name Underground.

Transport is the font used on UK road signs.

I'm not generally bothered about fonts, but I did have words with friend who was filling in PHD application forms in Comic Sans. I pointed out it was the same font I used when I was writing Teletubbies press releases. It has a time and a place...

I am boring, aren't I. Makes note to try and learn how to combine facts with humour.

I used to work donkeys years ago for a chap who was a font snob, loathed sans serif fonts.

I used to have to input and manipulate pages and pages of excel spreadhseets in fucking garamond. Nearly impossible to work with.

sunfun oh no you are not boring, I love random facts like that

I love the fact that the road signs font is called transport. How imaginative is that!

Teletubbies press releases are done in Comic Sans ?

That is my obscure fact of the day. I shall go back to writing a presentation in which I have no control over font, format, or anything except content a (slightly) happier person for knowing that.

GetOrf oh god don't encourage me, this morning I have already been late for CM, got behind on work and dog is about to disgrace himself on carpet because of this thread!

I wish I knew about this stuff. Can I ask for some advice then?

I don't like Arial or TNR, but they are the defaults on the 2 computers I use at home and work. What would be good for a pta newsletter - needs to look friendly (if a font can have such characteristics) but not childish.

Alana - Tahoma or Trebuchet I would say.

And meant to say GetOrf, Excel spreadsheets in Garamond - lunacy, lunacy. Using a typeface designed 500 years ago for printing books etc, for a computer spreadsheet, the man must have been insane.

He was mad. He went for ages looking through all the fonts and chose his favourite.

Bless him. I changed them all to Arial in the end, he had apoplexy and I had to bloody well change them back

[hcomic-sans-biscuit-emoticon]

I work freelance - somtimes office based, so one of the first things I do when starting a new job is get set up with email/templates etc. It is always quite an exciting moment finding out which font I will be using for the next few weeks. Am always gutted if it is Times New Roman 12.

In my dreams my thriving business involves beautiful stationery which is stylishly branded and involves minimalistic sans style fonts in lower case with slidly wide spacing.

I think everything might be dove grey but I usually wake up at this point....

Thank you Sarf

GOML
Sorry, I read your post as
I used to work donkeys [comma] years ago for a chap

Had visions of someone on Blackpool beach desperately switching between loading/unloading equines and a laptop spreadsheet recording ride details whilst some font-Nazi yelled "More serifs, more". :o

Is this thread for real?