Comic sans, widely regarded as one of the most hated and reviled typefaces of all time, gets insulted and bashed as a serious font owing to it’s seemingly comedic and ‘unserious’ nature.
Comic sans is an undoubtably odd typeface with odd spacing and hand-drawn aesthetic. It’s always a laugh when a sign promoting a serious message, organisation or warning uses comic sans as its font, the message will always come off as silly or a joke. Some say because of this it shouldn’t be used - at all. This is wrong for various reasons.
Comic sans is very easy to read. The wide spacing of loops and clear descenders and ascenders give a very open, readable font. This may benefit those who can’t read easily owing to an eye condition, or those learning English from a language based in a different alphabet (Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, etc). It also helps with those who suffer with dyslexia, clear letters and numbers make it easier to distinguish between confusing letters. Often when you see comic sans used it’s in situations like this and for the legibility rather than the actual style.
Another reason to use comic sans is in prime use for emotive writing, (not emotive as in the style of writing but rather, a display of emotion through the style of text). Comic sans fill the roll of showing jokey or unserious text and provides the necessary context to be able to read the text with the right mindset. A joke within a game, novel, or textbook my ‘play’ better if the reader understands it is a joke from the get-go.
Vsauce has a video of the same title which I highly recommend you watch. He delves much further into this than I. Comic sans will always be shunned, but to me it still has some use.
