A Matter of Case

[Genesis_13]

After reading a book, sometimes I'll read a comic and wonder where all the periods went.

Both for me, btw.

[Noise Monkey]

Comicraft's Wild and Crazy only comes in caps, so that's mostly what I use, but many Blambot fonts come in both and when I use them, its a little of this and a little of that.

[Phact0rri]

yeah.. I only type in lowercase.. fits in the balloons better! *nods*

[Van Douchebag]

Comic Book Commando (Regular speech) and Bada Boom (Logo, numbers, and exclaimated words) only comes all capped, but a font I use sometimes for SFX called Grinched comes both. When such an instance occurs, I choose whether to cap all, none, or some based on circumstance.

[Leko]

I use both, because I have a phobia of incorrect grammar, and apparently my phobia interprets all caps as incorrect grammar. No, really. It freaks me out.

All caps! Grammar! NOOOO! Uh, I mean, noooo!

Years and years of writing correctly. Also two years of NaNoWriMo, approxmately 180,000 words both novembers combined, makes a pretty hard habit to break.

CW

You did NaNo too? That's so cool! I quit at 10k two years ago, but this year I made it all the way to 50k. *so proud*

[Kirb]

I use all caps in some situations, but I use regular grammar when characters are speaking in my comic. As for the comics that use all caps, eh... I guess it really depends on the font. The sign of a good uppercase font is that you don't realize that the words are all uppercase until you really think about it.

You did NaNo too? That's so cool! I quit at 10k two years ago, but this year I made it all the way to 50k. *so proud*

50k? That sounds painful.
I haven't tried it yet. But I think I'll try next november. =)

[Mr.Bob]

Uppercase only. Quite likely a habit picked up from print comics, but personally I find it easier to read uppercase print because of the reduced number of characters to discern against. Perhaps it

[Dutch!]

All capitals, mainly because that's the way it's always been in every newspaper comic I've ever followed. Fred Bassett doesn't count.

And all lower case really gets on my goat because it is just plain wrong. You spend thirteen years at school being taught to correctly start sentences and names with capital letters, and now every bloody advertisement and its dog is writing in lower case. Bloody American drama shows are the worst offenders, and some of our native dramas are following suit.

[Yeahduff]

Graphic design doesn't count. The point is to be stylish and noticable. They can do whatever the hell they want so long as it makes sense and sells the product.

As for the comics, uppercase. As far as I could remember I LOVED the all caps writing of comics, particularly in Peanuts. I'd've written like that all through out school if I they'd've let me.

[JexKerome]

Already had this discussion, didn't we?

[Paul.Power]

I use upper case for most of my lettering, for a few reasons:

1. It's a habit of print comics that I guess I've picked up.

2. It goes back to the days when I used to do hand lettering, and the only way to make it vaguely legible was to print in all caps.

3. You can go down to smaller font scales and still read it.

I use lower case for the following things:

1. "Quiet" sound effects, like being hit by a pizza (yes, that does occur in one of my strips), or people whispering.

2. Singing. It just looks more natural to me to have it in "both cases" style rather than all caps.

It is a little odd considering my normal writing style is correct English, but there y'go. The font I use (Dom Diagonal BT) actually has both upper and lower cases, which is annoying for me as I keep having to turn Caps Lock on and off between writing text and naming files.

I hate to read an MB post written in all lower case as much as something all in upper case: in the same way that all upper case looks like shouting, all lower case looks like they're mumbling. I get the urge to say "Speak up!" whenever I see all lower case writing...

[Smight]

I like the regular english style for my comic. Sometimes I like To Randomly Capitalized words to give a Slight emphisis without the shouting effect.

[Joel Fagin]

Just a little something I actually only found out at the end of my ALL-CAPS days: Photoshop has an all caps setting, so you can type normally and it'll become capitals.

- Joel Fagin

[Paul.Power]

Just a little something I actually only found out at the end of my ALL-CAPS days: Photoshop has an all caps setting, so you can type normally and it'll become capitals.

- Joel Fagin

Enh, I use Corel Photo-Paint.

[Sippan]

Comics use caps because it looks totally weird to see lowercase letters in a speech bubble. Very few comics can get away with it. Personally, I use a font which is all caps, except the letter I has serifs in uppercase. That seems to be popular around comics, too. Having serifs on all the I:s is almost as annoying as not having serifs on the word I.

[Komiyan]

My font only comes in all upper-case.

Ding ding ding! Same here. I'd probably type in uppercase even if that wasn't true, though, think it just looks more... comic book-y.

[McDuffies]

Well, uppercase is more readable than lowercase. Maybe it doesn't look so obvious now, but back when comics were lettered by hand - uppercase handwriting is definitely much more readable than lowercase handwriting.
I mean, you'll usually have relatively small letters in your speech baloons (small compared so, say, letters on this forum) and you'll want them to be as readable as they can get. Lowercase is definitely more stylish, but if you want to read 50+ pages of a comic, stylishness becomes of second importance.
But the main reason I use uppercase is tradition.

[Prettydragoon]

I use all uppercase because... well... it just looks like a real comic that way. Also, the hand I use only comes in uppercase.

[Jim North]

Already had this discussion, didn't we?

Yah, but if I remember correctly, it didn't come value-packed in its very own thread last time.

[[geoduck]]

I use a whole mess of different fonts, but if a font has lower-case letters available, I use them. I agree that using all upper-case makes it look like the character is shouting all the time, but with some characters that's not a bad thing.


I use the much-reviled Comic Sans for my main characters. I've grown to dislike it recently, but I haven't been able to find anything I like better...