Lettering: Crossbar 'I's, and preparing your script!

[Jim_Campbell]

Sorry for the necropost, but I wanna know...

How would you prefer it laid out? With the description in capitals and the dialogue in lower case?

Description however you want (normal sentence case would seem easiest on the eyes) and normal sentence case for the dialogue, with bolded words in CAPS:

ARGYLE:      A bloody good question. I have no idea. But I know who will.

         (linked)

         We're going to the MARKET.

For some reason, Illustrator doesn't preserve bold/italic formatting when copying and pasting the text out of the script, so the above lets us see which words needs bolding without having to constantly flip backwards and forwards between Illustrator and Word.

I also thought artist types liked having the characters in a panel in caps so they know at a glance who is there.

I think that's from screenplay formatting, but it makes sense and is another good reason for having the description in normal sentence case.

Would doing a search replace for _i_ and _i'_ not solve the taxI problem? ie a space on either side?

Duh. Of course it would. I have no idea why I didn't think of that -- thank you!

Cheers

Jim

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Ta.

[Daveycandlish]

Off on a tangent with this one, but I was just thinking...

Why do we have bolded words in comics? Emphasis? Sure.
But it seems to be very other word in some US comics which surely just negates the effect? (And no, I have no examples to hand to quote at you!)
You'd think I'd know the answer having drawn and published my own comics for years, but no, I haven't a clue!

[Jim_Campbell]

Off on a tangent with this one, but I was just thinking...

Why do we have bolded words in comics? Emphasis? Sure.
But it seems to be very other word in some US comics which surely just negates the effect? (And no, I have no examples to hand to quote at you!)

You're quite right to be confused -- there isn't a hard and fast rule for this. Some writers bold to show louder words, some to show words that emphasized in normal speech, and some just bold up the words they think are important in the sentence. Some may do more than one of these things, and if they get an editor who thinks the important words should be bolded, too... well, that's how you end up with a lot of bolding.

Left to my own devices, simple bold-italic denotes the emphasized/stressed words in normal dialogue. Shouted/louder words get an increased point size, a shouty balloon, and then a shouty font, in that order.

Cheers!

Jim

[Jim_Campbell]

Although speaking as someone who's done lettering for others, scripted dialogue in all caps and prolific use of the TAB button doesn't half slow down the lettering process at times.

I missed this until now. Sorry!

If you copy and paste a tab into the Find/Replace dialogue, it should tell you what the character code for a tab is -- usually ^t or /t -- and you can search ^t^t^t and replace with ^t^t, which should only leave you with single tabs and even numbers of tabs. You can then search ^t^t and replace with ^t, which will give you only single tabs in your document, and then you can swap ^t for a single space.

Cheers!

Jim

[Mardroid]

Sorry for the necropost, but I wanna know...

How would you prefer it laid out? With the description in capitals and the dialogue in lower case?

Description however you want (normal sentence case would seem easiest on the eyes) and normal sentence case for the dialogue, with bolded words in CAPS:

Thing is, the actual convention laid out in the submission guidelines on this site and elsewhere, is that description should be one thing (sentence case, or capitals) dialogue the other. Which is which, doesn't matter as long as you're consistent.

Following the sample scripts available on the site, particularly John Wagner's, I have favoured the capitals for dialogue and sentence-case descriptions.  That being said, I understand Wagner was writing comics before they became largely computerised, so he likely just stuck with the style he is used to.

Flipping the other way (description to caps and dialogue to sentence case) wouldn't be much of a problem for me. However... sentence case, all the way through? I don't see a problem with it myself (capitals tend to look like shouting to me!) but it is hard enough for us newbie writers to get our stuff published without creating another obstacle by breaking the submission guidelines! Or do they need updating? Is the editor taking into account the letterer's preferences?

[Jim_Campbell]

Following the sample scripts available on the site, particularly John Wagner's, I have favoured the capitals for dialogue and sentence-case descriptions.  That being said, I understand Wagner was writing comics before they became largely computerised, so he likely just stuck with the style he is used to.

Speaking as someone who has written a fair few scripts on a manual typewriter, I'm very familiar with the convention. Even once the writers moved to word processors, I think the letterers found it faster to read the dialogue when it was all caps. However, now that they're no longer transcribing the script, but are just cutting and pasting, the convention is largely redundant.

The substantial majority of scripts I see don't use it any more -- they're sentence case throughout. Using CAPS for bolded words makes the letterer's life easier for reasons outlined above, but if the 2000AD sample scripts and submission guidelines still have all the dialogue in caps, then that's absolutely what you should do. It's not exactly hard work for the letterer to go Select All -> Change Case, after all.

Cheers!

Jim

[Mardroid]

Thanks for clarifying Jim.

[HdE]

Just a quick query - has anybody else had a problem when copying text from Word / Microsoft Word Processor into Illustrator?

When I do a CTRL+C in the word processor and a CTRL+V in Illustrator, for some reason it doesn't necessarily work - parts of the type disappear!

Am I doing something wrong here?

[Peter Wolf]

I prefer lettering to be in upper case without exception as thats the way it always was in 2000ad.

Also bolded words in caps amongst lower case lettering always looks like shouting to me regardless of the reason why that word has been emphasised in bold caps wheras when bold caps are used to emphasise word in upper case it doesnt necessarily come across a shouting and i always recall as a young reader that i always used to have to think about why a particular word was emphasised in bold and wether it was shouting or not.

It very rarely was shouting because words that were shouted were always in larger bold caps than standard so you always knew what was being shouted and what wasnt and this was typical of Jack Potters and Tony Jacobs lettering style back in the day.

[Jim_Campbell]

I prefer lettering to be in upper case without exception as thats the way it always was in 2000ad.

I'm not talking about the lettering, Peter -- I'm talking about the script. Most lettering fonts don't have a lower case, they have two different versions of the uppercase letters. If the script is typed all in caps, then you don't take advantage of those variations when the text is pasted into Illustrator unless the letterer does some prep work in Word first.

Cheers

Jim

[Mardroid]

if the 2000AD sample scripts and submission guidelines still have all the dialogue in caps, then that's absolutely what you should do. It's not exactly hard work for the letterer to go Select All -> Change Case, after all.

Okay, I actually just checked the guidelines again and... seems the on-site guidelines actually have been changed. No mention of 'case' at all in fact, so it seems sentence case throughout should be fine.

My apologies for not checking before making the above post. I was going by the guidelines stuck on the site for ages back before the site revamp.

[Mardroid]

As for the five sample scripts provided for artists, the majority follow the CAPS for dialogue, sentence case for description style, the exception being 'Cycle of Violence' which is sentence case throughout.

Despite being in the minority, the fact it's a sample means it's acceptable though. (I'll admit, for me, it was the hardest to read, but, the layout throughout is a bit different.)

[Jim_Campbell]

When I do a CTRL+C in the word processor and a CTRL+V in Illustrator, for some reason it doesn't necessarily work - parts of the type disappear!

Am I doing something wrong here?

I can't think what you might be doing wrong. I suspect it might be because (in Windows, at least) Word may be using its own version of a font that differs from the version that's available to Illustrator through the normal system fonts, but I'll confess to that being no more than a guess!

Cheers

Jim

[kid]

Yeah, that's always bothered me as well. Anyone who reads OOR WULLIE and THE BROONS in The Sunday Post knows just how sore on the eyes it is. SPACESHIP AWAY is also guilty of it, but when I raised the issue with the editors, they said it's too difficult to avoid.

That's why I still letter by hand.

(And that's why I don't get any work.)