What's so wrong with Comic Sans? | Hacker News Reader

What's so wrong with Comic Sans?

bbc.co.uk

15 pointsspuz29 comments

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I never thought it was that bad. A little amateurish, but it's homely and friendly. It has its uses.

edit: I just created http://www.comicfuckingsans.com

I think this calls for a comic sans day!

I've made a bookmarklet to turn other pages into comic sans wonderpages and put it on the site ;0)

"add your own reasons via twitter #comicfuckingsans"

Maybe you're already doing it, but would be cool to have a feed for them right under the list

Yeah, trying to add that now, thanks :)

edit: done. Thanks for the suggestion.

Complaining about Comic Sans is basically a hate meme. It's a silly ritual that many geeks like to engage in that makes them feel superior to the font bourgeois. Like all memes, participating in it also solidifies their social standing in the practicing group.

Hating on Comic Sans is like hating on Merlot wine because you saw it Sideways.

It's also a nice safe opinion to have about something. Let's say Bob McEntrepreneur links to his startup's landing page on HN. If he's using comic sans, that's guarunteed karma for the first person who makes the content-empty comment "Nice site, but lose comic sans". Hence ensuring the survival of the meme.

Related: enthusing about Helvetica.

I thought all the font snobs saw Helvetica as pedestrian, and wanted us to use Frutiger or something instead....

At least they'd be saying something more interesting than I Like White Bread!

The next step is to ironically embrace Comic Sans. If anyone has typography skills, I'd love to see a stab at Comic Mono for use in IDEs. Ironic Sans, perhaps?

I used to use Comic Sans as my font for code editing. It had the nice effects of:

1) Annoying the font bigots in our company.

2) I giggled every single time I opened a file to edit.

And Comic Sans Mono would be wonderful.

> The next step is to ironically embrace Comic Sans

done! http://comicfuckingsans.com

I love Comic Sans; http://www.longbeardstudios.com/

I don't normally complain publicly about Comic Sans so I guess am not part of this group. However, I do think it is hideous and I would never use it, just like I wouldn't use animated gif's on my site. This is taste only - not because I want to be cool or anything..

Hear, hear. I don't openly complain about it either, but I die a little inside every time I see it on a flyer or jam label.

I can't get behind that. I agree there is something decidedly bandwagon-y about this wave of comic sans hate, but even before I knew hating comic sans was a thing, I thought it looked stupid. Whenever I read something typeset in comic sans, it made whatever I was reading seem twice as stupid and cheesy. When I found out other people felt the same way, I actually was relieved.

And I have absolutely no design background. I think it's really a basic matter of taste.

It is a matter of taste (and likely class). There are a lot of people out there who think it looks great. Maybe sites should use Comic Sans if they detect the browser is MSIE 6, and save the "tasteful" fonts for everyone else. Everyone wins!

I am considering using Comic Sans all the time now for its ironic value.

It also helps recall content better than when using arial. Here is the highlight of a recent study:

http://www.economist.com/node/17248892?story_id=17248892&...

and here is the study itself:

http://cwl.cogsci.rpi.edu/cogsci10/cogsci10_proceedings/pape...

To be fair, the article says that something that is "difficult to read" is what helps recall, not comic sans per se.

Indeed. The authors used Comic Sans and Bodoni MT as their "difficult to read" fonts and see no difference between the two (but both were better than the "easier to read" Arial).

It's whimsical to see it in a programming context. I bought a book on Data Structures from Lulu and the source code listings are in it. I also think Simon Peyton Jones of Haskell fame uses it for his presentations.

I have watched presentations from very serious people (in computer science) using this font.

I suspect they're using it to approximate the look of writing on a whiteboard.

In which case, there are better options, but Comic Sans is more readily available.

As with most things, context is everything. If you want a slightly silly, informal-looking typeface and you only have a small amount of text to set, Comic Sans can work. As with programming languages, choosing the right tool for the job is the key.

The old complaint was that people used too many fonts in one document, going wild with their new WYSIWYG editor.

Now, people have for the most part adjusted to having a lot of fonts, and started using only one.

Unfortunately, it's Comic Sans.

I like using comic sans, but I do so ironically. :)

"Hitler freaks out over Comic Sans MS":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzmrxKhaKRU

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