12 Replies to “Font Matters”

  1. When I was a professor at Emmanuel College, I was walking down the hall one day and caught a glimpse of a Powerpoint in a Catholic theology class being taught by one of the sisters. On the Powerpoint was the question, “What is a Sacrament?”

    In Comic Sans.

    Involuntarily, in the hallway, I said out loud, “It’s an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, Charlie Brown!”

  3. Comic Sans was my font of choice when I was a DCE and writing for children and youth. Now as a pastor, I tend to use Tahoma or Calibri when I want a ‘clean’ font. Hmmm… never thought of it that way before.

  4. Yes. Yes. Yes. 100% Yes. Our last administrative assistant never believed me about this. He was convinced it was “joyful” and “fun.” I put my foot down, and it was banished from all text–paper and web, but he was always sure that this was just an extreme oddity in my personality.

  5. I knew a pastor who used Comic Sans…I think for the bulletins…emails for sure. I have used Arial for a number of years. I used Times New Roman only when received by a seminary professor.

    I did a short test and put Tahoma, Calibri, Georgia, Arial, Comic Sans, and Times New Roman on a document. Tahoma looks a lot like Arial to me. Calibri is okay but is a smaller font so I would have to increase the font size. It helps to see them all together.

    We changed the bulletin and newsletter to Georgia and received favorable comments. People found it to be more readable than the Arial we had been using. It just appears a bit softer to folks is my guess.

  6. A serif font is always easier to read than a sans serif font, which is why that’s what you’ll always see in books and newspapers.

    The only great use I ever had for Comic Sans was in the old days of being a chat room monitor on AOL. Unlike Arial, the default chat font, Comic Sans made it easy to distinguish between upper-case “i” and lower-case “l” and some other letters, so if I had to report people, I was getting the screen name right.

    Other than that, there are very few places where Comic Sans is an acceptable font.

  7. Also, if you’re going to take someone to task in that schoolmarmish way, you might not want to practice Inappropriate and Gratuitous Capitalization or place a dash between independent clauses instead of a period and a space, as God intended. [What!!? You will NEVER take Gratuitous Capitalization and dashes between independent clauses away from me! I will march in the streets to defend that right for my fellow scolds! Just not in Comic Sans! – PB]

  8. I knew a senior pastor who was quite fond of Comic Sans & used it for all his correspondence. It sort of worked for him. He was older, known for his eloquence – and wanted to keep it friendly and unpretentious. I think it worked for him. The rest of us, not so much.

  9. – serif/sans-serif: there’s conflicting research, mostly equally unreliable, as to which is more legible. It comes down to aesthetics and audience. (See Alex Poole’s 2003 lit review, available online, for a discussion.)

    – em-dash: it works just fine here (although I tend to prefer a space around them).

    – Comic Sans, for anything: shudder.

  10. This conversation reminds me a lot of my twin sister, who is a graphic designer. We affectionately call her The Font Savant. Because of all I’ve learned from her over the years, I was adamant that we change all bulletins & official correspondence to a new, consistent font when a new lead pastor was called. We even got entirely new letterhead designed, just for the occasion of sending out the letter informing the congregation of the acceptance of the call. In my mind was conveying subtly that “we are starting a new chapter.” Though I’m sure very few noticed, I still cling to my idea that it seeped in subconsciously! Plus: no more ugly fonts!

  11. I highly recommend “Just My Type: A book about fonts” by Simon Garfield. Among other things, it gives the history of Comic Sans, which I found quite interesting. I had become more aware of fonts when my office was choosing one to use as our “official” font for public correspondence and signs (we chose Verdana, based on conversations we had with our campus disability services director), but it is amazing to see how just a slight variation in the shape of the bowl of a lower-case g or the squiggly tail of an upper-case Q can change a font’s tone or readability. [Read it! Loved it! – PB]

  12. And while we’re at it– please NEVER, under any circumstances, Never, Ever, Ever use PAPYRUS.

    Especially on your syllabi or class presentations. [Well said. Here, here. – PB]

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