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Comment by samlinkl | Hacker News Reader

The hate for Comic Sans seemingly knows no bounds.

To provide at least one data point: My feelings about Comic Sans amount to "meh". I actually think it's a very-well designed font. It's just that people have no idea when it's appropriate and when it isn't.

I saw the light when I realized that Simon Peyton Jones (of Haskell/GHC fame) purposely used Comic Sans in all of his presentations -- just to weed out who was paying attention to the styling over the content. Generally, I think this might be a good principle, but you can definitely take it too far. For example, SPJ's slides are always well-articulated and don't contain L33tsp33k (or whatever we call what the kids use on IM these days).

SPJ about Comic Sans:

> This is a very funny question, "Why use Comic Sans?" So, all my talks use Comic Sans and I frequently see remarks like 'Simon Peyton-Jones, great talk about Haskell but why did he use Comic Sans?' but nobody's ever been able to tell me what is wrong with it. It's a nice legible font, I like it. So until somebody explains to me ... Ah, I understand that it's meant to be a bit naff, but I don't care about naff stuff, I care about being able to read it. So if you have got a sort of ... some rational reasons why I should not then I'll listen to them. But just being unfashionable? I don't care.

Because it's difficult to read.

Are you saying that you think that Comic Sans is difficult to read?

(I'm prepared to believe you, but the main complaint I've ever heard is that it's "silly" or "frivolous" or... well, actually I haven't heard much beyond that.)

It draws too much attention to itself to be body text, yes. It requires the reader scan the letters more than recognizing the shapes of words and moving on. (Yes, this is why we miss misspellings and even missing words. It isn't my job as a reader to catch that. The author should have a spellcheck program and, if it's at all serious, a human proofreader.)

There's a reason there's a distinction between fonts for body text and title text: Body text is all pretty simple, uniform, and easy to just scan through. Title text is meant to be a logo in its own right, more difficult to read, and therefore take up more of your time. Comic Sans is, arguably, a reasonable title text font. It isn't for body text. It's meant to ape handwritten text in comic speech balloons, but if you look at actual good handwriting, it looks more like body text than title text.

> It draws too much attention to itself to be body text, yes

That's about the vaguest complaint I've ever heard. If you have statistics and studies then I'm definitely prepared to listen, but...

> it's difficult to read.

It's recommended for readers with dyslexia because the letter shapes vary so much. (I don't know if there's any research supporting that).

Which is exactly why it's distracting to fluent readers.

That's an interesting claim. Do you have any evidence/references to back that up?

(I mean, it makes intuitive sense, but that's not really a good indicator of... anything, really.)

I also find it difficult and unpleasant to read, particularly as body text.

Mostly the kids are using emojis in IMs these days. I can't really tell what they're trying to say, but that doesn't seem to be a problem for anyone.

It's probably mostly the unicode "pile of poo" character or something. I hear Deadpool was a huge hit.

> just to weed out who was paying attention to the styling over the content

I definitely understand the intention, but I think it's misguided. Does he also fart randomly during his talks to weed out who was paying attention to random noises over the content?

It's a rhetorical question, of course. I've been to several of his uniformly excellent talks, and no he doesn't, but I do think the talks are hindered by using Comic Sans not least beacuse it causes people to ask the question "why"!

I invoke Godwin's Law:

The Comic Sans controversy is the most heated dispute about typefaces since Hitler weighed in on the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute. [1]

Because it matters which typeface your hate speech is set in:

"Your alleged Gothic internalisation does not fit well in this age of steel and iron, glass and concrete, of womanly beauty and manly strength, of head raised high and intention defiant ... In a hundred years, our language will be the European language. The nations of the east, the north and the west will, to communicate with us, learn our language. The prerequisite for this: The script called Gothic is replaced by the script we have called Latin so far ..." [2]

Here is the Bormann Decree, in which Adolph Hitler, the original Font Nazi, banned Blackletter for supposedly having Jewish roots: [3]

"For general notice I announce the following by order of the Führer:

"It is false to regard or describe the so-called Gothic typeface as a German typeface. In reality the so-called Gothic typeface consists of Schwabacher-Jewish letters. Just as they later came to own the newspapers, the Jews living in Germany also owned the printing presses when the printing of books was introduced and thus came about the strong influx into Germany of Schwabacher-Jewish letters.

"Today the Führer, in a discussion with Herr Reichsleiter Amann and the printing company owner Herr Adolf Müller, decided that Antiqua type is henceforth to be designated as the standard typeface. Gradually, all printed matter should be converted to this standard typeface. As soon as possible in regard to school textbooks, only the standard script will be taught in village and elementary schools."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiqua%E2%80%93Fraktur_disput...

[2] Völkischer Beobachter, Issue 250, Sept. 7, 1934.

[3] https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Hitlers-Third-Reich-fa...

Since it seems fashionable to be outraged over something on the internet, I choose the unbridled and unfair hatred towards Comic Sans, the lemonade stand of typefaces. What kind of sick, evil bastards don't like lemonade stands?

I'm also pretty pissed about Pluto getting demoted.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. People like to feel part of a collective group, and the Internet's biggest collective group is outraged people. In this case, outraged nerds. We collectively 'agree' that outsiders (that is, idiots) use Comic Sans. Then we attack the style, rather than the substance, because they didn't know of the unwritten rules of our subculture.

Mine also knew no bounds until I found out my grand daughter likes it. So Ive been using it more and more in applications she may see.

It is a pretty clean typeface, her name looks nice laser burned into her music box. YMMV

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