Eliminate Comic Sans? No Joke!

There seems to be a movement afoot. The crusade features a font. A typically clichéd piece of type appears to irritate a whole heckuva lotta folks.

I'm not talking about a revolution, but a quiet uprising against one of the most overused computer fonts...Comic Sans.

First things first. Not sure why Softpedia produced the graphic, above. But it pretty much covers the argument for eliminating Comic Sans from typography, as we know it.

Second things second. I come from a long line of "Old School" journalistas. I freakin' studied typography in college. The digital revolution...which started with PCs and has spread in so many different directions since then...has cheapened typography, in a way.

It's just too dang easy these days to have "fun with fonts," as they say. Like the folks who go crazy with clutter, in writing, in words, in their lives. They favor the quantity over quality argument, and standards be damned!

When I studied typefaces, ranging from Bookman to New Century to Bodoni & beyond, typography was an art. I think it still is, in places. But Comic Sans, apparently invented 15 years ago by a Microsoft Geek, makes this whole font business seem tawdry in a way.

There's a reason Times New Roman has that particular appelation. Ever heard of that Old Gray Lady, The New York Times? Bodoni, used in many newspaper headlines to this day, first surfaced in 18th-Century Italian books published by the font's creator, Giambattista Bodoni; an offshoot, Poster Bodoni, communicates the "Mama Mia!" message on Broadway posters, according to Wikipedia.

Emily Steel, writing in the online Wall Street Journal, says Comic Sans was designed to look like comic book lettering.

"The jolly typeface has spawned the Ban Comic Sans movement, nearly a decade old but stronger now than ever, thanks to the Web," Steel writes in her article, entitled "Typeface Inspired by Comic Books Has Become a Font of Ill Will."

The mission of the Ban Comic Sans movement is "to eradicate this font," Steel says in her article. Detractors claim that using Comic Sans in any publication is "analogous to showing up for a black-tie event in a clown costume," she reports.

OK, Comic Sans is seen by some as fun. It's light. It's bubbly. But overused. I reckon I don't have enough time to join any kind of movement, especially one dedicated to the way folks shape their messages in print. But I can urge you to try another avenue.

One uses words to create meaning. The argument can be made that a silly clown font might detract from that meaning. Think about it.

Editor's Note: Yet another of Mrs. Scribe's contributions to the Random Complexity Writing Challenge: 435 words.