I got a tweet the other day (I never thought I’d string those words together in the same sentence) in which someone in the publishing industry literally begged people to stop using Papyrus font in their work correspondence. It took me a minute a) to figure out what she was talking about and then b) to care a lot about what font people chose to use.

I must admit the error of my ways. Yea though I looked down my nose upon this hapless woman’s plea, within five minutes I had bumped into this sign:

Really? What 13-year-old girl was assigned the task of posting that sign in the breakroom? Is that really the kind of information you want coming out in Comic Sans?

“But wait,” you say, “Comic Sans is adorable. It makes me think of kittens and singing manatees, the kind whose tails have NOT been chopped apart by motor boat props.” And while I readily agree with you that there’s some level of comfort to be offered by notes spelled out in the Microsoft equivalent of balloon letters, some notices just need to be taken a little more seriously.

But then again, the delivery of bad news just might be better received in a font that makes you feel secure and giggly. I imagine all kinds of termination notices might go over better if they were a little…fluffier. Audits might be more pleasant if all of the documentation of your pending jail time for tax evasion were spelled out in Middle-School-Girl Sans. Like this, for example:

And while truly nothing short of a Silkwood shower will permanently erase the sting of finding out that someone in a nearby cubicle is a non-hand-washer AFTER he borrowed your pen, your stapler, your scissors, and your car, the world can still be a better place if we all leave each other notes in horrifically age-inappropriate font. So have a nice day! J