Why do people hate Comic Sans, and why do some readers with dyslexia like it?

People hate Comic Sans mostly because it is used in the wrong places. Vincent Connare designed it for Microsoft, which released it in 1994, drawing on comic book lettering to imitate the informal tone of speech bubbles. It became infamous for turning up on warning signs and formal documents, where it can look too informal, unprofessional or inappropriate.

The campaigners behind the 'Ban Comic Sans' movement put the complaint plainly: a typeface should match the tone of its text. A playful font on a message like 'do not enter' sends two signals at once. The campaign began in 1999 after an employer insisted that one of the designers use Comic Sans in a children's museum exhibit. Even the reader's judgment may shift: in one online experiment reported by Errol Morris, readers were slightly less likely to believe a sentence was true when it was set in Comic Sans than in five other typefaces.

Yet the font has fans, especially in schools. It is often described as especially legible, and it has fewer rotated and mirror-image letters, wide spacing and a capital I that does not look like a lowercase l. A 2020 Twitter poll by TES found 44% of the teachers sampled used it in their resources. Many use it as an aid for people with dyslexia.

Here the evidence is more careful. Research does not suggest that specially tailored dyslexia fonts help with reading, and spacing seems to matter more than letter shape. So the main complaint is not about the letters themselves: critics object to a comic font turning up in places that call for a serious voice.