COMIC SANS

If this breaks down into a rant, please forgive if not indulge me. I know why I it irritates me and maybe I’m too thin skinned but then, there you are. I started writing with a typewriter in the 60’s. It was faster than scribbling. With a pen or pencil you need to have in mind exactly what it is that you want to say. You can only write so fast. The typewriter allows me to keep up with the muse after all, I write what comes to me in the moment. Turning it on and off is not an option. If I turn it off, it may go away and not come back. Left adrift in the middle of a paragraph, not knowing when or how it was going to end; it's not much fun when you’re trying to be a writer. Anyway, the advent of computers with spell check was a Godsend. I could edit as I wrote; no strike-overs, no white-out fluid, no correction tape. All it took was a few key strokes.

In the early 90’s my eyesight was keen, my little Mac Classic only had a few fonts to choose from and defaulted automatically to New Times Roman. I was on a roll and it didn’t matter which font I used. I was generating study guides, homework assignments and lab projects for middle and high school students. On the side I was laying down the first works, the beginnings of this journal. The font I chose was Comic Sans, I didn’t know why, I just liked it. Come to find out, it was created for comic books. It was, still is childlike and its popularity somehow offends publishers, authors and font designers who take themselves way too seriously. They didn’t want serious, professional work presented in a comic book font; actually, they didn't like anything in the comic book font. In a low profile but never the less serious pushback, Comic Sans was criticized from all directions. A ‘Ban Comic Sans’ campaign was waged against the childlike font that was so easy to read. 

In 1999 I went to get my driver’s license renewed. What a shock; I nearly failed the eye test. I had reading glasses for a long time but this was unexpected. Poor eye sight turned out to be early onset, macular degeneration. There are two kinds of MD; wet and dry. Dry is bad but Wet is really, really bad. So the good news was that it could have been worse. I could count on diminishing acuity of vision at a moderate to slow rate, depending on how I took care of my eyes and of course, heredity. Better glasses helped for a while but when that trick was spent, there was nowhere to turn. That was 15 + years ago. Since then it has occurred to me that my attraction to Comic Sans is, that it really is easier to read. All fonts are stylized and Comic Sans pattern has a childlike, hand written quality where the curves and radius’ of similar letters differ slightly from each other. It is subtle but it's enough.

I’m sure it has something to do with being an educator, being a reader/writer and having low vision; there is nothing simple about reading, nothing at all. We are proud of our brains but unless you have a very good reason to know, you know very little about how the brain works. As preschoolers we learn the alphabet, singing the a,b,c, song. We put letters together to make words, and words together to make sentences. Parts make up the whole. But when you read above a 4th grade level you don’t pay as much attention to letters; you see and recognize a few but you construct meaning from word shapes and sequence. A visual stream of symbols needs to be translated into ideas and then into story. When you see the picture of a bird you don't have to recognize the beak first, then the head, the wings, tail and feet to know it's a bird. We make sense of a seamless flow, of shapes, tall and short letter combinations, rounded or angular, in combination with other short-tall-rounded-angular combinations. Groups of words appear in context; it’s about a news story or a recipe or a technical report or a letter from your lover but you have a clue and can anticipate what might come next. Most of what we read is accomplished with minimal attention to letters, it’s word shape and sequencing. Now it seems; linear thinking, publishing people like the uniformity of letters that can be, if your eyes aren’t perfect, difficult to stream into familiar shapes and combinations. 

The ‘Ban Comic Sans’ push came from Typographers. I didn’t realize it was a career field but there you go. That outcry comes around, goes around and comes back again if you read and write, you hear about it. They are invested in the sanctity of typography. Their spokesmen believe that the childish sensibility of Comic Sans insults everyone over 12 unless they are reading a comic book. Now it’s my turn to push back. Certainly, each different font creates a subtle message that is supposed to complement the main message, sort of like crown molding in the kitchen. But if the bank or the county court sends me a letter with either good news or bad news, the font will not be an issue unless I find it difficult to read. When your money goes away, you can get more money. But when your eyes or your ears go away, when your legs go away, it’s not that easy. They can patch us up but they can’t make anything like new, or even good as it used to be. Being professional doesn’t have to mean narrow and taking for granted what you don't know. Ignorance is simply, what you don’t know. So, for all of the knit-picky typographers, I’ll try to be as thoughtful as they have been; they can take their sanctified sense of import and file it up in a deep, dark place. I use several fonts now; caved in to that narrow bias. I suppose that’s about something picked up in childhood; wanting to please others. The font 'Trebuchet' is more acceptable but ironically, created by the same guy who gave us Comic Sans. I use Comic Sans whenever I feel like it, just because.