“Barry, I love you, and damn you nearly killed me with those long handwritten letters.
Folks, as a comics reader who did learn and use cursive in school, let me tell you: that is a dying form. Young readers wonât take to it.
I myself have a hard time with it, and in the interest of productivity, would like to offer alternatives to long blocks of scripty font text.
Because I get it, thereâs a reason, you want it to feel like a handwritten letter, and itâs a visual medium, so it feels like it makes sense.
But if you had something like a realistic piece of clothing a character wore, but it disrupted the visual appearance of the character or made it hard to âreadâ the characterâs actions, youâd alter it, right? Even if it was historically accurate?
1. Show a visual snippet of the letter with the actual text in a box laid over the top.
2. Seek out a highly legible hybrid font. And make sure to actually look at it in the ink and paper context where it will appear.
3. Increase the letter size on a handwritten font a good deal.
4. Consider having the text appear as thought above the writer or reader of the letter, therefore the standard font is appropriate.
5. Start the first line with a scripty font and then blend into something more readable. Give me the clue that this is handwritten, but no need to beat me over the head through the entire paragraph.
Just consider it if you happen to be working on a comic. It helps. “