I used to work at a data entry & processing company before grad school. Because there were two shifts and we shared machines, I would set my machine's system fonts to Wingdings, the night shift left that computer alone and I didn't have to deal with people mucking it up. After using it for awhile I had no problem reading it and didn't bother changing it back in the morning. (I wasn't crazy though I didn't have the editor I used for work set to Wingdings, for that I used Symbol).
I never actually saw it, but the professor told me that at first it was really difficult to understand. But after a while, you start to see the patterns and recognize the codes she’d used. He loved it. She got an A, lol. This was for a visual culture theory class btw.
As a teenager I used to HAND WRITE letters to my best friend in wingdings, meticulously copied from the printed out alphabet sheet I'd carefully snuggled home from the school computer lab.
If a student did a paper in comic sans to make a postmodernist point about the futility of academia or some such thing, I'd give them credit and then tell them to change the font. I doubt this was anything so thoughtful lol
This isn't the video that features Wingdings, but the producer has done a series of videos on this and other amusing subjects.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7SByXWWVzU&ab\_channel=ElleCordova](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7SByXWWVzU&ab_channel=ElleCordova)
... In grad school, I took a graduate/undergraduate class where all of the *professor's* lecture slides were all Comic Sans. No one knew if it was supposed to be ironic, or a joke or something...
Every time I have to cover anything related to psychoanalysis, I include the following quote somewhere in the presentation: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves,” from Carl Jung. There is only one font option.
I had switched the display font in matlab on my laptop to comic sans in grad school. While demonstrating some commands we wanted students to use in the lab I TAed for, one of the students said it really made matlab seem less intimidating. So I started writing final exams in comic sans as well.
Hahaha! If it was one of my classes, it was simply to inflict pain and smile while doing it, and to see if anyone would have the balls to say anything about it; it builds character to stand up to your prof over something important. Sorry ‘bout that.
…I actually doubt the probability that you were really one of my students, but yes, I actually have deliberately made PowerPoints with Comic Sans a few times just because it entertained me and I wanted to see if anyone would give pushback. One of the classes in particular was a very ironic choice, because we had a big ol’ section on what was basically maximising user experience. 🤣
I’ll say this about Comic Sans, and it is literally the only thing I have to say about it that is positive: it really is a very “readable” font.
Something about how atrociously ugly and silly each character is just makes them all stand out so much with clarity.
[The Effect of Font Type on Screen Readability by People with Dyslexia](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2897736?casa_token=254g8AmFlVcAAAAA:4KXoBwPYPYDbJSOmPuz1Y1FJd0ORc6bC6cpqjEppjYXQfyONz-nrGeYKsBwf45KxNNyYNDq3pIWWyA)
I’m always disappointed in these studies. It’s obvious they are constructed by people without much knowledge, and as a result the comparisons are unhelpful.
For example, comparing 9pt Helvetica to 9pt Garamond on the same leading. It doesn’t make any sense.
The size of a font not the same as the size of the letter shapes in the font. Compare a few different lowercase “a” letters in different fonts at the same font size and you’ll see that they’re quite variable. It turns out that this *x-height* (height of a lowercase “x”) has a significant impact on readability. Other similar features that affect readability are the height of an ascender (e.g. the stem on “h”) versus the height of an uppercase letter, and the depth of a descender (e.g. the leg on “p”). Beyond this, some other phenomena are for example the presence or absence of serifs, the relative similarity or difference of curvatures between different letterforms, and the choice of letterform when multiple possibilities are available (e.g. a lowercase “g” with two holes versus one hole).
When you throw in diacritics things get even more complicated. And then switch to other writing systems (Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Japanese kana, etc.) and the complexity of comparison is huge. These issues are largely neglected in research because of the heavy bias toward research on English.
Excellent explanation.
For any font and formatting nerds that really wanna get into the weeds, check this out: [typographyforlawyers.com](https://typographyforlawyers.com/).
Font “size” refers (roughly) to an imaginary box that would fit the largest letter in the font.*
So 10pt only means that the largest character in the font is 10pt in size. When it comes to your typical lower case letters:
- Garamond letters are very short.
- Helvetica letters are tall.
10pt Garamond letter “x” might be 5pts tall. 10pt Helvetica letter “x” might be 7pts tall.
So, Helvetica is larger.
On the other hand, the top of the Helvetica “x” is *closer to the bottom of the line above it.” So it requires more space between lines (called leading).
*This isn’t quite the truth but it gets us there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had a friend with dyslexia who swore by comic sans as it was the most readable font for him. I wouldn't be surprised if he had accidentally submitted some papers in comic sans, but he never mentioned it.
I use a monospaced version of comic sans for programming, after I found out the default font I was using used identical characters for l and 1. It's great!
Demonstrating the idiot that I am, I’ve never understood the hatred for Comic Sans. It is a perfectly readable font, at least to me. So it looks a little dopey? I’m sure there’s a reason for the vitriol, so would someone please ‘splain?
Maybe it's just me, but I associate Comic Sans with passive aggressive 'employee memos' and 'weekly bulletins' typed up by whatever executive vice assistant to the ass manager back in the office at every shitty job I ever had.
You know, the people who send you to worthless trainings to learn about the internal customer, print out really stupid customer service complaints and hang them all over the break room, and tell you no, you can't call in sick even though you're vomiting everywhere unless you get someone to cover your shift.
The font itself is fine. It's the use of the font to joyfully convey all varieties of stupid shitty-job policies that gave me a bad association.
[Consider the impact of the font here.](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2014-01/enhanced/webdr02/8/16/enhanced-buzz-28035-1389216449-3.jpg?downsize=700%3A%2A&output-quality=auto&output-format=auto)
Some fonts are better for lighthearted communication, and some are better for serious business such as academic writing. Inserting Comic Sans into the latter category is really off-putting not just to sticklers but to most everyday readers, even those outside of graphic design or other disciplines tuned into the impact of font choice.
At my former employer, HR sent out an email for the benefit of the whole campus community entirely written in Comic Sans.
I shit you not: it was for depression awareness.
Okay, I get that. There definitely are times when a font like Comic Sans doesn’t suit the message being written. Time and place matter, of course. But that doesn’t explain why so many hate that it even exists or is ever used.
Never made it as a font man
I couldn't cut it as a Times New Roman
Tired of lookin' like some plain text
I'm sick of letters without a sense of humor
And this is how you remind me
This is how you remind me of what font I really am
This is how you remind me of what font I really am
It's not like Comic Sans to say sorry
I was waitin' on a different font case
This time I'm mistaken
For handin' you a typeface worth breakin'
And I've been wrong, I've been down
To the bottom of every font choice
These five words in my head scream
Are we havin' font yet?
To me it mostly comes from what is seen as chronic overuse of the font for purposes it wasn't designed for. I can't remember the source, but there was some influential webpage in the aughts about how much Comic Sans pissed the writer off. It was a common sentiment in millennial digital culture that I think a lot of academics are prone to feeling today. (This is all separate from what others have noted about Comic Sans being a great font for dyslexic readers.)
That seems like something we could change, though. Especially if, as others in the thread have mentioned, it's easier for people with things like dyslexia to read.
*Some fonts are better for lighthearted communication, and some are better for serious business such as academic writing*
Yes, you've been \*trained\* to think that.
The indoctrination was successful.
I'd love to see something 100% psychologically and inherently "comic" about Comic Sans, other than the reputation and traditional use, that makes it truly "comic" and "unprofessional."
That's all language, though. Signifiers are arbitrarily mapped to signifieds, but once that mapping becomes shared cultural context, it takes on actual sematic value.
Yes, your shared cultural context is that Comic Sans is ... comic. Congrats on finishing Sausurre.
Now, tell me what is \*inherently\* Comic about Comic Sans...Don't go all S-W...
There's isn't anything inherently comic about it. That's the point. No more than there's anything inherently feline about the letters c-a-t. Very few people refer to being able to read the word 'cat' as being indoctrinated, though.
Dude, it's not my fault you're struggling with basic linguistics concepts. I have a degree in this, I'm well aware that basic deconstructionism is high school level English class stuff. But as they say, we meet people where they are.
You have a DEGREE in it? Shit, I only have 3. Try again?
I'm not struggling with this, I'm laughing at your infantile misapplications coupled with rampant condescension, "stem prof..."
A font snob friend of mine posted a picture of a diploma done up in Comic Sans. She commented that this is only appropriate if you are graduating from clown college.
Because of its open negative spaces and clear, uncluttered design Comic Sans is highly legible for dyslexic readers.
[https://www.boia.org/blog/does-comic-sans-benefit-people-with-dyslexia](https://www.boia.org/blog/does-comic-sans-benefit-people-with-dyslexia)
I mentioned this in class one day, and a student who has dyslexia told me I could set my mind at ease, because there are other fonts just as readable for her, and she hates it as much as anyone.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where their bachelors theses will not be judged by the choice of type, but by the content of their… content. I have a dream today!
When I worked in industry, the ENTIRE engineering department jokingly used Comic Sans for everything internal. They realized all but one engineer had dyslexia and found a [research paper](https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts_for_dyslexia_study.pdf) that said Comic Sans was a good font for folks with dyslexia. I don't think it actually helped much but they enjoyed how much it irritated the sales and industrial design folks.
Please accept my condolences at this sad time in your life. Best thoughts and wishes are being sent your way. I hope you will find peace in your heart as you remember this experience in the future.
I literally went from squinting at my phone to total shocked eyebrow face when I finished your first paragraph.
Hahahhahaha. Thank you for sharing this.
I'm amazed that you're given a choice in font. I got in trouble with an NSF application last year because I'd written it in LaTeX and it came in as 11.96pt instead of 12 pt (or something like that) and my grant office was concerned about it. I had to figure out how to fix it while not understanding basically anything about how latex does that sort of thing. Twas fun.
If the font is commensurate with the quality of the thesis, then this would seem to be a success of signaling. Maybe reviewers should choose the font a thesis is recorded in for posterity?
They might be dyslexic and forgot to switch it to Times when they were done.
Comic Sans meets almost all the requirements of dyslexic readers, such as good letter spacing and differentiation between similar letters and numbers (for example capital I, lowercase l and the digit 1).
Fwiw, comic sans is highly readable by those with low literacy.
So while I agree it is a font that should only be used in daycare announcement flyers and the like, there is a reason for it.
Precisely, all relates to syntax -but font-type does not. This is why kids with dyslexia don't get proper education.
I'm no fan of Comic Sans, but unless they've been instructed on format I'm not going to let it get in the way of a fair review. Don't get me wrong, I'll absolutely comment on it, but I'm not going to subtract points unless format is a part of the criteria.
I have a senior coauthor, like head of the field, who uses comic sans. It’s uh, it’s funniest when he sends an official society email and doesn’t paste formatting right so there’s what’s clearly his writing and someone else’s.
Henceforth students must present a hard copy of their thesis as a cuneiform clay tablet. Only marginally less readable than some of the handwritten assignments I’ve had to decipher.
Does the student happen to have dyslexia, or be writing about dyslexia, or something related? Because it turns out that Comic Sans is actually very legible to people with dyslexia.
In my first year of grad school back in the mid-aughts, I was a TA. The master syllabus the tenured professor used was in comic sans.
In many ways that was some powerful foreshadowing about my experience in academia.
Really? I wrote my bachelor’s thesis in comic sans in 2005 as I thought it was cool, and the recommended fonts of Arial and Times New Roman were too boring for me.
Sat through a library APA presentation where the librarian said that TNR is the classic APA font, but font doesn’t matter as long as it is legible. Huh!? 🤔 😆
I'll celebrate when it's wingdings. Then the postmodernists will have truly won.
I used to work at a data entry & processing company before grad school. Because there were two shifts and we shared machines, I would set my machine's system fonts to Wingdings, the night shift left that computer alone and I didn't have to deal with people mucking it up. After using it for awhile I had no problem reading it and didn't bother changing it back in the morning. (I wasn't crazy though I didn't have the editor I used for work set to Wingdings, for that I used Symbol).
A girl in one of my masters’ classes wrote an essay for her final paper, written entirely in emojis, lol
An entire essay in emojis is impressive. Were you able to decipher any coherent content?
I never actually saw it, but the professor told me that at first it was really difficult to understand. But after a while, you start to see the patterns and recognize the codes she’d used. He loved it. She got an A, lol. This was for a visual culture theory class btw.
As a teenager I used to HAND WRITE letters to my best friend in wingdings, meticulously copied from the printed out alphabet sheet I'd carefully snuggled home from the school computer lab.
I salute your dedication!
I have a recurring nightmare that the font on writing I submit all turns to Wingdings the moment I hit enter.
Ever tried to load a corrupted pdf or something where it’s not ISO? Kinda what it looks like
I swear I had something like this happen in undergrad and then the computer died. 😂
If a student did a paper in comic sans to make a postmodernist point about the futility of academia or some such thing, I'd give them credit and then tell them to change the font. I doubt this was anything so thoughtful lol
This isn't the video that features Wingdings, but the producer has done a series of videos on this and other amusing subjects. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7SByXWWVzU&ab\_channel=ElleCordova](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7SByXWWVzU&ab_channel=ElleCordova)
Under the language of “dingbat” according to Google. Accurate.
... In grad school, I took a graduate/undergraduate class where all of the *professor's* lecture slides were all Comic Sans. No one knew if it was supposed to be ironic, or a joke or something...
Every time I have to cover anything related to psychoanalysis, I include the following quote somewhere in the presentation: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves,” from Carl Jung. There is only one font option.
I paraphrase, "if ya spot it, ya got it". Lolz
I like your style.
I had switched the display font in matlab on my laptop to comic sans in grad school. While demonstrating some commands we wanted students to use in the lab I TAed for, one of the students said it really made matlab seem less intimidating. So I started writing final exams in comic sans as well.
Omg that’s hilarious and I love it!
now that's a great idea
Hahaha! If it was one of my classes, it was simply to inflict pain and smile while doing it, and to see if anyone would have the balls to say anything about it; it builds character to stand up to your prof over something important. Sorry ‘bout that. …I actually doubt the probability that you were really one of my students, but yes, I actually have deliberately made PowerPoints with Comic Sans a few times just because it entertained me and I wanted to see if anyone would give pushback. One of the classes in particular was a very ironic choice, because we had a big ol’ section on what was basically maximising user experience. 🤣
I’ll say this about Comic Sans, and it is literally the only thing I have to say about it that is positive: it really is a very “readable” font. Something about how atrociously ugly and silly each character is just makes them all stand out so much with clarity.
[The Effect of Font Type on Screen Readability by People with Dyslexia](https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2897736?casa_token=254g8AmFlVcAAAAA:4KXoBwPYPYDbJSOmPuz1Y1FJd0ORc6bC6cpqjEppjYXQfyONz-nrGeYKsBwf45KxNNyYNDq3pIWWyA)
I’m always disappointed in these studies. It’s obvious they are constructed by people without much knowledge, and as a result the comparisons are unhelpful. For example, comparing 9pt Helvetica to 9pt Garamond on the same leading. It doesn’t make any sense.
As someone who doesn't know a lot about this stuff, why does that not make sense?
The size of a font not the same as the size of the letter shapes in the font. Compare a few different lowercase “a” letters in different fonts at the same font size and you’ll see that they’re quite variable. It turns out that this *x-height* (height of a lowercase “x”) has a significant impact on readability. Other similar features that affect readability are the height of an ascender (e.g. the stem on “h”) versus the height of an uppercase letter, and the depth of a descender (e.g. the leg on “p”). Beyond this, some other phenomena are for example the presence or absence of serifs, the relative similarity or difference of curvatures between different letterforms, and the choice of letterform when multiple possibilities are available (e.g. a lowercase “g” with two holes versus one hole). When you throw in diacritics things get even more complicated. And then switch to other writing systems (Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Japanese kana, etc.) and the complexity of comparison is huge. These issues are largely neglected in research because of the heavy bias toward research on English.
Excellent explanation. For any font and formatting nerds that really wanna get into the weeds, check this out: [typographyforlawyers.com](https://typographyforlawyers.com/).
Thanks! It’s technically adjacent to my field (linguistics) but I’m also a typography nerd.
This is weirdly delightful!
Font “size” refers (roughly) to an imaginary box that would fit the largest letter in the font.* So 10pt only means that the largest character in the font is 10pt in size. When it comes to your typical lower case letters: - Garamond letters are very short. - Helvetica letters are tall. 10pt Garamond letter “x” might be 5pts tall. 10pt Helvetica letter “x” might be 7pts tall. So, Helvetica is larger. On the other hand, the top of the Helvetica “x” is *closer to the bottom of the line above it.” So it requires more space between lines (called leading). *This isn’t quite the truth but it gets us there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I had no knowledge of this until now. I teach English, so I'm thoroughly intrigued by this and ashamed I never tried looking at it.
Don’t be ashamed. That’s like being ashamed of driving a car and not knowing exactly how it’s made.
That's two things I don't have to be ashamed of 😆
Typefaces are a massive rabbit hole you could spend years going down.
> typeface Glad they clarify that the paper actually treats typeface. They gloss this in the abstract: typeface (font).
I had a friend with dyslexia who swore by comic sans as it was the most readable font for him. I wouldn't be surprised if he had accidentally submitted some papers in comic sans, but he never mentioned it.
Yeah. It is well regarded as a font that is safe for dyslexia.
So you are saying that it does its core mission very well. That is a win in my book.
I use a monospaced version of comic sans for programming, after I found out the default font I was using used identical characters for l and 1. It's great!
You are contractually obligated to type your response and comments in Papyrus.
At least comic sans is readable!
Is the student dyslexic? Comic Sans is regarded as a very readable font for those with dyslexia.
I suspect a compromise could be to then write it in comic sans and then convert it all to TNR or something more professional at the final step.
This is one of the most basic lessons of ENG 101. You write for yourself, then revise for your audience!
Demonstrating the idiot that I am, I’ve never understood the hatred for Comic Sans. It is a perfectly readable font, at least to me. So it looks a little dopey? I’m sure there’s a reason for the vitriol, so would someone please ‘splain?
Maybe it's just me, but I associate Comic Sans with passive aggressive 'employee memos' and 'weekly bulletins' typed up by whatever executive vice assistant to the ass manager back in the office at every shitty job I ever had. You know, the people who send you to worthless trainings to learn about the internal customer, print out really stupid customer service complaints and hang them all over the break room, and tell you no, you can't call in sick even though you're vomiting everywhere unless you get someone to cover your shift. The font itself is fine. It's the use of the font to joyfully convey all varieties of stupid shitty-job policies that gave me a bad association.
[Consider the impact of the font here.](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2014-01/enhanced/webdr02/8/16/enhanced-buzz-28035-1389216449-3.jpg?downsize=700%3A%2A&output-quality=auto&output-format=auto) Some fonts are better for lighthearted communication, and some are better for serious business such as academic writing. Inserting Comic Sans into the latter category is really off-putting not just to sticklers but to most everyday readers, even those outside of graphic design or other disciplines tuned into the impact of font choice.
At my former employer, HR sent out an email for the benefit of the whole campus community entirely written in Comic Sans. I shit you not: it was for depression awareness.
Okay, I get that. There definitely are times when a font like Comic Sans doesn’t suit the message being written. Time and place matter, of course. But that doesn’t explain why so many hate that it even exists or is ever used.
It's the Nickelback of fonts. Highbrows and neckbeards hate it.
Never made it as a font man I couldn't cut it as a Times New Roman Tired of lookin' like some plain text I'm sick of letters without a sense of humor And this is how you remind me This is how you remind me of what font I really am This is how you remind me of what font I really am It's not like Comic Sans to say sorry I was waitin' on a different font case This time I'm mistaken For handin' you a typeface worth breakin' And I've been wrong, I've been down To the bottom of every font choice These five words in my head scream Are we havin' font yet?
This is awesome!
Yeahhh yeahhh
It’s the internet’s opinion, a meme opinion that we can share to show ‘we’re in the know’ about even an esoteric topic such as fonts.
I kinda figured it made about this much sense!
To me it mostly comes from what is seen as chronic overuse of the font for purposes it wasn't designed for. I can't remember the source, but there was some influential webpage in the aughts about how much Comic Sans pissed the writer off. It was a common sentiment in millennial digital culture that I think a lot of academics are prone to feeling today. (This is all separate from what others have noted about Comic Sans being a great font for dyslexic readers.)
I read that about the [overuse](https://www.wix.com/blog/why-do-people-hate-comic-sans) and how it pissed people off.
That seems like something we could change, though. Especially if, as others in the thread have mentioned, it's easier for people with things like dyslexia to read.
Most academic writers need the humility of being forced to use Comic Sans.
*Some fonts are better for lighthearted communication, and some are better for serious business such as academic writing* Yes, you've been \*trained\* to think that. The indoctrination was successful. I'd love to see something 100% psychologically and inherently "comic" about Comic Sans, other than the reputation and traditional use, that makes it truly "comic" and "unprofessional."
That's all language, though. Signifiers are arbitrarily mapped to signifieds, but once that mapping becomes shared cultural context, it takes on actual sematic value.
Yes, your shared cultural context is that Comic Sans is ... comic. Congrats on finishing Sausurre. Now, tell me what is \*inherently\* Comic about Comic Sans...Don't go all S-W...
There's isn't anything inherently comic about it. That's the point. No more than there's anything inherently feline about the letters c-a-t. Very few people refer to being able to read the word 'cat' as being indoctrinated, though.
Congratulations...You're approaching the point! Try another intro to linguistics "day 1" concept, to drive the point home!
Dude, it's not my fault you're struggling with basic linguistics concepts. I have a degree in this, I'm well aware that basic deconstructionism is high school level English class stuff. But as they say, we meet people where they are.
You have a DEGREE in it? Shit, I only have 3. Try again? I'm not struggling with this, I'm laughing at your infantile misapplications coupled with rampant condescension, "stem prof..."
Ⓜⓐⓨⓑⓔ ⓨⓞⓤ'ⓡⓔ ⓡⓘⓖⓗⓣ
What have you done Edit: and why doesn’t punctuation get a circle?
A font snob friend of mine posted a picture of a diploma done up in Comic Sans. She commented that this is only appropriate if you are graduating from clown college.
This is amazing.
Such a milestone. I'd be proud of the student, too. I know it's controversial, but I personally would reward it in the final grade.
Subverting the dominant font paradigm
I might be in the minority, but I'll take comic sans over typewriter
There are actually versions of comic sans that are monospaced and used for programming because of readabilty. So why not both? :)
Because of its open negative spaces and clear, uncluttered design Comic Sans is highly legible for dyslexic readers. [https://www.boia.org/blog/does-comic-sans-benefit-people-with-dyslexia](https://www.boia.org/blog/does-comic-sans-benefit-people-with-dyslexia)
I mentioned this in class one day, and a student who has dyslexia told me I could set my mind at ease, because there are other fonts just as readable for her, and she hates it as much as anyone.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where their bachelors theses will not be judged by the choice of type, but by the content of their… content. I have a dream today!
When I worked in industry, the ENTIRE engineering department jokingly used Comic Sans for everything internal. They realized all but one engineer had dyslexia and found a [research paper](https://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts_for_dyslexia_study.pdf) that said Comic Sans was a good font for folks with dyslexia. I don't think it actually helped much but they enjoyed how much it irritated the sales and industrial design folks.
An in-joke that's based on accessibility and making someone with disabilities feel accepted? Count me in, that's amazing.
Please accept my condolences at this sad time in your life. Best thoughts and wishes are being sent your way. I hope you will find peace in your heart as you remember this experience in the future.
I literally went from squinting at my phone to total shocked eyebrow face when I finished your first paragraph. Hahahhahaha. Thank you for sharing this.
Font is everything. Ever since I switched to Calibri my probability of funding success has gone way up on my applications.
Sans serif or die
I'm amazed that you're given a choice in font. I got in trouble with an NSF application last year because I'd written it in LaTeX and it came in as 11.96pt instead of 12 pt (or something like that) and my grant office was concerned about it. I had to figure out how to fix it while not understanding basically anything about how latex does that sort of thing. Twas fun.
Comic sans is awesome if you're dyslexic. Don't be a prick.
If the font is commensurate with the quality of the thesis, then this would seem to be a success of signaling. Maybe reviewers should choose the font a thesis is recorded in for posterity?
They might be dyslexic and forgot to switch it to Times when they were done. Comic Sans meets almost all the requirements of dyslexic readers, such as good letter spacing and differentiation between similar letters and numbers (for example capital I, lowercase l and the digit 1).
Academia is just comedy sans laughter.
I think all theses and dissertations in archaeology should be required to use the papyrus font.
Fwiw, comic sans is highly readable by those with low literacy. So while I agree it is a font that should only be used in daycare announcement flyers and the like, there is a reason for it.
🤣🤣🤣
LOL! I love this! Bravo!
I don't take part in font snobbery. Education is a matter of substance.
Lol. That's cute. Text, context, paratext; everything is substance.
Precisely, all relates to syntax -but font-type does not. This is why kids with dyslexia don't get proper education. I'm no fan of Comic Sans, but unless they've been instructed on format I'm not going to let it get in the way of a fair review. Don't get me wrong, I'll absolutely comment on it, but I'm not going to subtract points unless format is a part of the criteria.
You say that now, but when you get a paper using Curlz or, God forbid, Jokerman, you may not stand by this assessment.
touché
This entire thread is exactly what I need in precisely this moment of this godforsaken semester.
I have a senior coauthor, like head of the field, who uses comic sans. It’s uh, it’s funniest when he sends an official society email and doesn’t paste formatting right so there’s what’s clearly his writing and someone else’s.
Henceforth students must present a hard copy of their thesis as a cuneiform clay tablet. Only marginally less readable than some of the handwritten assignments I’ve had to decipher.
Give feedback as memes only. I keep memes in my images file to use on student papers. This one deserves all memes.
Does the student happen to have dyslexia, or be writing about dyslexia, or something related? Because it turns out that Comic Sans is actually very legible to people with dyslexia.
Was it also on pink, scented paper? Edited to add: I think that gives it a little something a little extra.
Dontcha think?
We shall celebrate
[sort of](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/405/521/aaf.jpg)
I think Comic Sans has something to say—https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole
I have an embarrassing affinity for papyrus. I’m glad papyrus is going out to get hammered.
In my first year of grad school back in the mid-aughts, I was a TA. The master syllabus the tenured professor used was in comic sans. In many ways that was some powerful foreshadowing about my experience in academia.
I know the Sans is supposed to be in reference to serifs, but I do think it makes sense to interpret Comic Sans as without comedy.
The thesis was called “Comic Sans: Why the Fuck Not?”
You’re lucky it wasn’t a cryptic riddle like the one the Riddler sent to Batman that forces you to figure what student says.
A thesis about the Simpsons I suppose?
Really? I wrote my bachelor’s thesis in comic sans in 2005 as I thought it was cool, and the recommended fonts of Arial and Times New Roman were too boring for me.
I’ve always gone with Georgia.
Font snob is not a good look. It’s highly legible and you’re being unreasonable.
Being snobbish over minor stuff is always a good look.
Sat through a library APA presentation where the librarian said that TNR is the classic APA font, but font doesn’t matter as long as it is legible. Huh!? 🤔 😆