@sg said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
So in my comic class, I had to learn how to letter comics.
I've always been curious--what's with the random bold words in comics?
For that answer, we'll turn to The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics!
As Dennis O'Neil puts it:
"...this word is spoken with emphasis, a bit louder than normal. Once, it was standard practice for editors to make several words in each balloon bold, sometimes without regard to the content of the dialogue. The idea was to provide the reader with eye candy--to vary the presumed monotony of ordinary lettering. There may have been a bit of validity in that theory, but only, I think, a bit; and when illogical words were emphasized, the practice may have slightly damaged the literary and narrative quality of the work."
Nowadays, the writer tends to select the bold words as we might select italicized ones in standard print (in a comic, the italics will get lost visually), but in older comics it is mostly as above. The editor doing it willy-nilly because "it looks cool."