Speech Balloon - Lettering

Lettering

Traditionally, a cartoonist or occupational letterer would draw in all the individual letters in the balloons and sound effects by hand. A modern alternative, used by most comics today and universal in English-translated manga, is to letter with computer programs. The fonts used usually emulate the style of hand-lettering.

Traditionally, most mainstream comic books are lettered entirely in upper-case, with a few exceptions:

• Name particles such as de and von, and the "c" in a surname of Scottish or Irish origin starting with Mc
• To indicate a frightened or quiet manner of speech
• An interjection such as "er", "um", etc.

In a few comics, uppercase and lowercase are used as in ordinary writing. Since the mid-1980s, mixed case lettering has gradually become more widely used in mainstream books. Some comics, such as Pearls Before Swine, also use lowercase speech to mark a distinctive accent (in this case, the male crocodiles’ accented speech, opposed to all other characters who use standard uppercase speech).

Recently, Marvel Comics experimented with mixed case lettering in all its books. Most mainstream titles have since returned to traditional all upper-case lettering but titles specifically marketed to younger readers or a more manga audience such as the Marvel Adventures line, Runaways and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane have retained mixed case lettering.

In many comics, although the lettering is entirely in capital letters, serif versions of "I" are used exclusively where a capital I would appear in normal print text, and a sanserif (i.e., a simple vertical line) is used in all other places. This reduces confusion with the number one, and also serves to indicate when the personal pronoun "I" is meant. This lettering convention can be seen in computer fonts such as Blambot's "DigitalStrip.ttf" and "AnimeAce.ttf" fonts, which make no other distinction between lower- and uppercase letters.