20 / 39
Jun 2019

Today I learned that it is some kind of law of comic making (In line with "Ye shalt not let balloons touch ye border of thine panels", "balloon tails shalt not cross!" etc), that lines in comics SHOULD BE ALWAYS WRITTEN IN CAPITALS.
Mine aren't. I wonder if this is such a big issue, since I don't find ALL CAPITALS to be easier to read, like the rule brings as a reason for it's existence.
Do you use ALL CAPITALS in your comics? for some reason, or "just because the rule says so"?

  • created

    Jun '19
  • last reply

    Jun '19
  • 38

    replies

  • 3.5k

    views

  • 25

    users

  • 70

    likes

  • 2

    links

fuck thaaaaaaaaaat

iirc the all caps thing came about in america when comics were printed for CHEAP and someone thought caps would make things easier to read, which it didnt. its also the origin of american comics' use of bold & italic emphasis, and double punctuation like --

when making a comic nowadays, it totally doesnt matter, and even mainstream american comics dont follow this rule anymore.

Yeah, it is confusing how a lot of these guidelines and articles about comics act like it's still 1937 on the calendar, or something. With all the "be aware that your character MUST have specific proportions, posture and head-height, fitting for his role in the story" and such, generally acting like superhero comic books is the only genre that's allowed to exist. It all feels so... outdated.

yeahhhh. theres a lot of people in comics stuck in a bubble where the only viable comics are american superhero comics fitting very specific conventions. that just hasnt been the case, well, ever - but especially not today.

I didn't even know that was an actual rule in comics?? I didn't think too much of reading in capitals or lowercase (both read just fine for me) until I showed my comic to a couple of friends whose native language isn't English/doesn't use alphabet. And they told me that they find words in capital letters are super difficult to read xD
I did it first because I thought it would look more pro or something, and I was too lazy to pick out a clear font that I like, so I picked the 'standard' American comic font. Although I'm seriously thinking about changing it when the next chapter begins.
Another thing that comes with using capitals is that you can no longer emphasize text by using caps, because everything is already in caps, so you'd have to figure out other ways of doing it.

To other comic artists I'd say, just use whatever font you like, capitals or not, as long as it's easy to read. x)

No and i don't think most comics here follow traditional rules either, which is great because we gets to see a wider variety of comic styles this way.

Also i think some comics do the capslock thing because they're familiar with manga which is translated to english in a capslock font (some manga style comics use the exact same font too). Maybe manga translators use that font in the first place because of the western comic rules but i do think in this case people use it not because its a rule but because their comics take inspiration from manga.

I just use the font call back issue it saves me the worry of the grammar problems.

There are comics that use lower case letters. However, it is easier to read all caps because the letters are all the same size and the font can therefore be made bigger.

All capital letters are not easier to read for me tbh, so my comic uses lowercase. I once got told to make a custom font that's all caps, but when I got around to make my own font it didn't really look good... xD

I hand write my word bubbles so for the sake of legibility I stick to all caps. All caps also means no ascenders or descenders running into your other text if you have a wordy bubble.
That's personal preference though, rules are made to be broken especially if they're broken well.

Do whatever you prefer. I prefer to use caps fonts for comics, but I have made exceptions.

Quite frankly, comics are art. Art doesn't/shouldn't have rules beyond what is... well... legal matters.

It's a different question entirely if you're trying to make something commercially viable. If you want to make something that sells, you need to appeal to whatever the intended audience seeks to at least a certain extent. If you want to introduce the audience to new ideas while still selling well/having a good-size audience, you need to pick your battles. Diverge in the areas you regard as important, keep the others as close to the standards your audience seeks as possible. That way you can attract an audience and still present new ideas.

Funny that for me the fact that all letters are the same size is a reason why text is much harder to understand, not easier. Multiply hardness by 3 for each additional line of text in the bubble.

I prefer not using all caps. Maybe because I'm online to much for my own good but all caps makes me think the character is yelling. Everyone yelling all the time. That'd be like reading the comic version of Tumblr. I guess it's a social norm that's changed.
Besides, in my own comic I like it so I can emphasize words by capitalizing them. I hate italics, bold can look muddy on small screens. And with the scrolling style of webcomics I can make plenty of room for word bubbles so they're easy to read.

At the end of the day, you do you.

When someone says "rules and laws" to comics/art, they're exaggerating at best and maybe being pretentious at worst.

There are no rules.

Just largely accepted suggestions that have worked in the past or have made things easier for people. Even then, a lot of these "rules" are outdated, which is why people improve them and add more over time.

I suspect that if you try to say to painter that there are no rules of anatomy or perspective, they will try to strangle you. =D

Personally I think you learn the rules to know when to break them, but I could just be arrogant and dislike authority.

I didn't say there are no rules of anatomy or perspective though? Basically what I said is there is no rule that you have to follow/work with anatomy or perspective in mind. Art is your passion, your time spent, basically you investing your life in a thing. Noone gets to tell you how to do it as long as you aren't breaking the law or hurting anyone.

If you want art you can sell or that will be appealing to certain audiences however? Certain guidelines will start to apply, and these guidelines will depend on the audience you are trying to obtain and the look you wish to achieve.

To say it's all caps is a bit misleading... because for some comic fonts, the letters are generally uppercase-appearing letters, BUT the letters ARE actually, technically, lowercase.

Sometimes there are differences between the uppercase and lowercase sets. It becomes extremely important when using the letter I (uppercase i, not L) which is of course an important letter in English.

So when you type out the dialogue, it should actually be typed out like your regular typing with a mix of upper/lower case and NOT all uppercase.

If you type it out in all caps, every I will have the stems on it and it would look terrible in the middle of words. I would say this is a rule that shouldn't be broken.

I don't think there's a rule that says you have to use all uppercase letters, though it is definitely tradition and what people are most used to. Much like how using a standard serif or sans serif font would look out of place. We just don't do it right? And when you see a comic that uses one, it doesn't usually fit or it looks amateurish, doesn't it?

So you can use other options for sure, but I think you should make sure it works with your art style and comic and don't just use it for the sake of using it.

As a painter myself, I call bs:joy::joy:

Some rules hold no weight, I'm gonna just be blunt.

Painting is a completely different medium and even then, the methods to how you learn colors and anatomy are different.

Often times, when someone says "there are rules to this", it's with the implication of "do things THIS WAY or you'll NEVER be a good artist", which is stupid and limiting.

Yes -- there are guidelines on how to learn comics or art. And there are the exact ways to convey humans and atmospheres (why we have realism).

But like -- how many of us really followed those guidelines to heart? How many take some bits from the guidelines and then go our own way?

Bottom line, just make sure your art' s improving and that it looks good for you. I personally don't cap my speech bubbles, someone else might .

The end result should just be readable. If I can read it and if you can read it, does it matter if it's all Caps or not? :joy:

Uppercase lettering tends to generally make for easier kerning... something that's less of an issue when using pre-made fonts.

As to the topic of following "rules", most of them were established in regards to readability. Deciding to go against them shouldn't be taken lightly or without concern for the effect on readability.

I prefer the caps method cause it's just easier to read on my phone and is just nicer to work with when it comes to fitting it on a page in the text bubbles, and this is a personal preference, I just think capitals look nicer, I hated learning lowercase lettering in school, you already taught me the English alphabet once why the fuk you have to teach it to me AGAIN. That said I'm fine with lowercase too.

Just don't fucking hand-write your text if your writing looks like shit or can't stay level (slowly starts leaning upwards), ffs just dont' fking do that it looks like shit and reads like shit. Or worse yet, if you write in cursive, I thought that bullshit difficult to read and messy practice was phased out now, why people still doing it on things that are SUPPOSED to be legible to everyone???

You feel passionate about this topic, don't you! :wink:

I do use all caps and a custom designed comic font from my guy Nate at https://www.blambot.com/2 . I didn't used to, but when I switched, I noticed a lot more engagement. It looked a lot more professional. It really is worth it to follow the traditional comic rules for text presentation. At least know the rules before you break them.

I honestly thought the all-caps thing was for comics aimed at younger audiences, or was for pacing purposes. It's really easy in English to speed read a page that's all capitals because the physical size of the letters is almost the same, so you can digest it faster. :thinking: I wouldn't say it's a rule, but it is something to think of visually and for pacing...

I use all caps because I created a font out of my own handwriting for that extra personal touch, and since my handwriting is usually unreadable I had to start writing in all caps just so I could understand my own notes in college. I've never actually heard of the "must be in all caps" rule, it's just how I write.

I think I'm just sick of running into comics I can't read because of the artist insisting on using their illegible handwriting or making it in an art program that doesn't include text functions.

If your comic's text is not readable, you have failed at making a comic, that's just all there is to it. It's a story telling medium, if it can't be read it's not fulfilling it's primary purpose of storytelling.

(obviously this doesn't apply to silent comics as those would not have dialog text)

I agree with this 100%. It's not much effort to cut and paste in font from a writing program through the screen capture process (ie the PrtSc button and CTRL+V). And if you're scanning it, it's not impossible to write the dialog on the computer, print it out and cut out the words and glue them on strips to the parts. Very annoying, but doable.

I don't even care if you use Arial or Comic Sans; If I can't read it, I will dip out.

OHHH, now if I didn't hand-draw all my comics and manually write all the dialogue myself, then yes. the rule of CAPITAL LETTERS in bubbles are a definite must. Its basically the standard.

I'd say it makes text bubbles look neater, because unlike regular next, you often have to split the sentences into shorter segments, especially if you work in a traditional page format and can't have the bubble take up the whole panel.

Cursive is still the leading way to write lowercase in many places using the Latin alphabet. It's the only way I know how to write, so if I was handwriting my comic it would be cursive. I don't do it, for legibility, but that's the only option I would have in term of handwriting.

Before finalizing the first pages/panels, just try out some different options and see what works.

Look at the difference:

The first(Wild Words) is clearly superior to the rest, but the second one (Blambot Pro Lite) could also work. The bottom two (Arial and Angeline Vintage) both look unprofessional. While Arial is easy to read, it also looks boring, like no thought was put into the text at all. The last one is just difficult to read. The capital i especially looks bad. Capital i is a very annoying letter when it comes to script fonts.

I think it's really important to stay within the realm of a legible, workhorse, comic font for the main dialogue and agree with Kura that if your text is hard to read, then you have failed at the communication aspect of comic making. Unless your goal is to make the text difficult to read.

I purposefully did not add a white border around this text so it isn't completely clear to read:

To repeat what JeanGullet said, you really have to know the rules before you can break them. You can break them, but it has to be in purposeful way that adds to the comic and doesn't detract from it.

As for handwriting the lettering, bad/good handwriting... it matters somewhat but the thing is that lettering is different than your handwriting. While they may look similar, you can't just write normally. You have to really draw each letter individually and make sure every letter is neat and has good negative space.

I do think it's good to get in the habit of hand lettering some text at least. Please... don't use fonts for SFX. Not to say that they can't look good, but handwritten SFX almost always look better.

Yeah, it's a comics "rule"- it's both a legibility and logistics issue.
Because capital letters all have a very similar "hit box" if you will to their footprint, so it's easier to allow for them in a tight space. No j g q y swoops dipping into the text line below or concern for overlap- which is an issue with lower case letters, of course. In this way the fonts can be tighter in both kerning and row height and uniform. Thus making it easier to read at a glance in more ways than one.

Also, there seems to be some assumption that the typing is in all-caps. No: comic fonts are special, and made to be almost all capital letters and uniform as people have said. If you just type in all-caps with a normal font of course it's going to look ridiculous, because the font is not made for that purpose. Comic fonts are also mostly capitalized except that i's only have the crossbar on top and bottom when they are used in singular "I" or at the beginning of a sentence. Comic fonts are made special this way, and when dialogue is typed into a comic font it isn't all in caps, it just looks that way due to the font face.

If you want to make a comic that doesn't have such an industrial or generic look to its font, there are comic fonts for that. There are ones that look indie, or handwritten, or angry, or drippy, or any number of things. Using a comic font and sticking to comic's "caps" doesn't mean your comic will look American or Generic.

As with all art "rules" there are reasons to break them, and consequences when you do- one might want to do this with purpose. But please don't disregard a convention without the knowledge or understanding of why it exists. /very strong feelings about comic fonts

I only use all capital letters in my comic, if I feel like using all capital letters in a creative way.

Capital letters can be used to express excitement, loudness, etc., so I don't use capital letters all of the time.

I don't even pay attention to whether a comic has capital letters or not when I'm reading. I just pay attention to creativity.

When I said custom I meant the font was specifically designed for comics. There are dozens of great free fonts on Blambot, I'm using Back Issues BB which is a free one. The guy will custom design you a font if you want though, and from what I've seen his prices are very reasonable.

Well, on one hand I want a custom font (or better - a logo) for my comic, but on the other hand... judging by the quality of my art, won't that be a bit... pretentious and tacky? Like a person buying Wacom Cintiq 24HD while their skill is at stick figures...
Then there's a question of what is a "reasonable price"? For a such high profile guy you might expect prices starting from $500...

Not a mandatory rule for comics nowdays, but I use all capitals lettering in mine because I choose to.

That's an opinion. You can use sound FX fonts for sound FX- you just have to know which font is "appropriate" for the particular sound FX.

This part I do agree with. I see tons of comics where serif fonts or sans serif fonts that arent appropriate for lettering are used and to me, it ruins the comic.

There are fonts that are lowercase and can be used to letter comics because of their readability/legibility...but not every comic style font that has lowercase is to be used for basic lettering. Case in point, I purchased a font from Blambot last year called Collection Complete- not exactly a font to be used for regular balloon lettering:

This is the mantra that I pretty much live by.