Why no Comic Sans italic?

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Level 1

57 points

Why no Comic Sans italic?

I use Comic Sans as my preferred font in Mail, but the italic form is not available in the menu. Same for Pages. But I've received email in Comic Sans where some words were italicized; I presume the sender of the email was using Windows.

If I copy and paste one of these words into a Pages document, it appears in the default Pages font.

But if I copy and paste one of these words into an email I'm composing, it appears in Comic Sans italic. What's more, if I highlight that word and start typing, the new text also is in italic! So obviously, Mail has a Comic Sans italic font. Why can't I access it directly, and is there a way to do that? And why doesn't Pages seem to have it at all?

MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.12

Posted on Apr 1, 2020 5:43 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

dialabrain

Level 10

122,777 points

Apr 1, 2020 6:08 AM in response to hlritter

You can download it for free here: https://www.dafontfree.net/freefonts-comic-sans-ms-f38379.htm

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Answer 2

Apr 1, 2020 7:09 AM in response to hlritter

Dialabrain's advice. On Windows, Microsoft applications allow one to make an italic (or bold) representation of font that has no italic or bold installation. On the Mac, every referenced font face must be installed, or the reference may be mapped into another font entirely — possiblly showing its italic face if installed, or without italic if not.

Pages adheres to the preceding rules. If the font is not physically installed on the Mac, it will either succeed in font mapping to another font, or not. Once you drop that downloaded Comic Sans Italic into your local (~/Library/Fonts) folder, the operating system will make it instantly available to Pages and other applications.

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Answer 3

hlritter Author

Level 1

57 points

Apr 1, 2020 7:19 AM in response to VikingOSX

That’s very helpful, thanks. But the question remains: Why, when I paste a word in comic sans italic into Mail, can I then select that word and replace it by typing new text, all of which appears in comic sans italic?

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Answer 4

hlritter Author

Level 1

57 points

Apr 1, 2020 7:25 AM in response to dialabrain

Looks like that will solve my problem, thanks! But if the OS doesn’t already have the font in its system files, I don’t see why I can get Mail to show new text in comic sans italic by first pasting a single word in that font into a Mail document, selecting the word, and typing new text in its place.

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Answer 5

Apr 1, 2020 7:43 AM in response to hlritter

The source of that paste operation is likely a regular Comic Sans font reference that has the CSS3 font-style: italic; applied to it. Apple Mail below the user visuals, understands HTML and CSS3 styling, and images what you have pasted. The word that you then change in Apple Mail will then conform to CSS3 italic style rule applied to it.

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Answer 6

Kurt Lang

Level 9

58,740 points

Apr 1, 2020 8:08 AM in response to dialabrain

Just to add. A local source would be your own installation of Windows on your Mac, if you have it. Go to (in Windows 10):

/Windows/Fonts/

Copy these files to your Mac partition:

comici.ttf (italic)

comicz.ttf (bold italic)

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Why no Comic Sans italic?

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