Comic Sans was drawn for cartoon characters, and it may help some readers.
In 1994 a Microsoft designer saw cartoon characters in beginners' software speaking in Times New Roman and thought it looked absurdly formal. He drew a typeface based on comic book lettering, using only a mouse. It became the world's most mocked font, and a favourite of teachers.
Vincent Connare was working at Microsoft when he saw a beta of Microsoft Bob, software meant to make computers friendly for beginners, in which cartoon characters spoke in Times New Roman. That felt far too stiff. He drew a new typeface on screen with a mouse, modelled on the lettering in comic books he had in his office, including The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen.
It was finished too late for Bob. Its first home was 3D Movie Maker, and it then shipped with a Windows 95 add-on pack, later as a system font, and became a default in programs like Microsoft Publisher and Internet Explorer. Shipping with Windows put it in front of ordinary users everywhere, who used it in places it was never meant for.
That is the source of its infamy. It turned up on a sports club owner's angry open letter, on a Dutch war memorial, on formal legal and political documents and on a major newspaper's front page. Designers mock it because a playful, speech-bubble face in a serious context sends the wrong signal. Connare himself was paid nothing extra for it, and said in 2017 he had only used it once.
Yet it has real defenders. It is widely described as legible and is common in schools and as an aid for some people with dyslexia: its letters are widely spaced, and it has fewer mirror-image shapes than many fonts, so b, d, p and q look more distinct, while its capital I has little bars to tell it from a lowercase l. A 2010 study even found students remembered more from text in slightly harder-to-read fonts, including Comic Sans Italic. Whether it is a good font depends on the job.
Source: Wikipedia — Comic Sans · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
