How many words do you put in one speech bubble? And punctuation question

[Lensing]

I studied different comics to find an answer to this and I pretty much found everything.,
and I don´t believe in too general answers like: 10 panels per page maximum and
10 words per bubble maximum (american superhero artists sometimes make those general statements)

Here is a random pick of a Little Annie Fanny comic because I remember that they always
had a lot of text and the text was also important. Then there is a lot of comics with only very
minimal words in the bubbles.

How do you handle this? Do you overload the bubbles like in the example? Or the less words
the better? Or always depends and what fits?

Bonus question, what about punctuation. Do you put it at the end of the bubble? I´m not sure
how I´ll handle that in my next comic and lettering is somethng I struggle with.

Examples from your comic are welcome

[ThunderChicken]

If a comic is too wordy my eyes will glaze over and I’ll just skim it. I prefer to see the art telling the story. This is my own ADHD causing that, so by no means should you use my opinion as a rule.

Oddly, I have no such problem with reading a novel. I can (and very often do) sit and read for hours. For some reason, though, in a comic I like things lighter and simpler.

In addition to ADHD I am also OCD, so incorrect or missing punctuation will bother me. I won’t lose sleep over it, but it will bug me.

Unless it’s inconsistent. Then I will totally lose sleep over it.

[KevinReijnders]

When it comes to speech bubbles I try to play around with them to make them fit the composition of the panel/page. It's definitely the weakest aspect of my work (at least in my opinion.) But as I'm currently working on my 3rd 100+ page book, I've gotten a bit of a feel for it.

Speech bubbles like the one in the picture you posted, is something I personally avoid like the plague. I hate them so, so much. Big blocks of text I prefer to break up into multiple bubbles, and maybe even across multiple panels.

An example of Trespasser Chapter 02 is this. I broke up the text, and staggered the sentences to make the whole look more appealing and have it fit within the overall panel:

My style has also pretty much gravitated towards longer horizontal balloons with no more than 2 lines of text within a bubble (though exceptions apply.)

As a tip, when layouting the composition of a page, start with the text first. I find it easier to fit my art around the words, than the other way around. If you look at the earliest pages of Trespasser you'll see me making that mistake haha.

Finally, as for punctuation, I kinda always have a since sentence within a single balloon, so there will always be a point, question mark, exclamation point or an interrobang at the end. (not me now noticing I literally forgot a point in the Buntha Bear example )

In some cases there's a group of three points if the the sentence continues in a different balloon.
An example from Chapter 03

[kyupol]

I usually go like this...

This is the most I put in speech bubbles now...

Compared to how I used to do it... which is difficult to read on a phone. ‍

Rule of thumb... I try to make it as easy reading as possible. Even if you have the attention span of a goldfish, you'd still be able to read

[NickRowler]

I heard with webcomics, people suggest using larger font than what you would use for print. It has to do with people reading it on mobile.

In my older work, I did use smaller text. But it was also in a comic that was more story driven.

While my newer comic is more gag-a-day style and is formatted more for reposting on social media.

[KevinReijnders]

If I were you I would try to center align the text and stagger the lines a bit differently to make it fit the bubble better. Something like this: