Years ago, I made a mistake.

It began when I found out something that, at the time, I couldn't believe I didn't know and hadn't noticed up to that point. It came from a post on the Zukahnaut blog, by Ötty Justason, where there was a handy image explaining how the capital "I" should be written when lettering comic strips and comic books. The blog is no longer there, but it can still be accessed on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Basically, the normal "I," without crossbars on the top, should be used in most circumstances, and the crossbar version of "I" should only be used in very specific cases, normally if it's a personal pronoun, the first letter of someone's name, or in an acronym.

Someone I followed on Twitter retweeted this, and I was a bit skeptical, as I had never heard of this rule before. I used the crossbar version of the "I" all the time, in drawing comics as well as in normal handwriting. At the time I regulary drew a webcomic called The Bird Feeder, and I even created a font for use with the comic, based on my normal handwriting, which included only the crossbar version. I replied to him asking if this was a new rule that he'd come up with, or if it was some hard and fast rule that was in wide usage. He said it had been around for at least a century. My response was that comic art has evolved quite a bit in the past century, so it stands to reason that rules from a hundred years ago could be reexamined. I didn't see a problem with the crossbar version, and as long as the text is readable and you can get across what you're trying to say, it shouldn't matter. As a cartoonist, I figured I could just ignore the rule as well as anyone who called me on it.

This was a mistake, and he probably thought I sounded like a complete idiot. After further research I would find out how much of a mistake it was, and how much of an idiot I was.

While I was determined to soldier on with the way I was doing things as an artist, as a comic strip enthusiast it was fascinating to me, and I looked at all the comic strips that I could from all the cartoonists that I could, trying to see if they followed the rule. Nearly every comic strip I looked at did. Many cartoonists just didn't use the crossbar version at all, but those that did only used them in pronouns or names as the rule says you should. There are even some that mainly use lowercase letters, such as Cul de Sac and Bizarro, but even in the rare instances where all capital letters are used in order to add emphasis, they still follow the rule. I even looked at web comics, and everyone seemed to be following the rule there as well. I wondered if every cartoonist followed the rule, or if there was somehow a cartoonist that bucked the trend. If so, I had to find it, partially because it was an interesting bit of comic strip history, but mostly to vindicate myself in ignoring the rule. After a wide search of all kinds of comics, I narrowed it to more famous, successful syndicated comic strips. I looked through the various strips on GoComics, and after a while I finally found one.

Dilbert.

Yes, Scott Adams, who draws Dilbert, does not follow the rule. It is the only comic strip that I've been able to find so far that doesn't follow it, besides my own. At the time, I thought that should be good enough. If a comic strip can be as successful as Dilbert has been and not follow the rule, then I felt safe in not following it either.

The problem with that, however, is that Scott Adams is an idiot.

It's too complicated to get into all the reasons why he's an idiot, but after having followed his exploits over the years it's become clear to me that he's not as bright as he likes people to think he is. And he really wants people to think he's smart. He does everything he can to sound smart to people who don't know any better. But he isn't. He's a complete moron.

What this means is that not only is it a bad idea to use Dilbert as an excuse to continue breaking the I rule, but the fact that Scott Adams is the only professional cartoonist that doesn't follow it is actually an argument FOR the rule. Any rule that is followed by everyone except the one moron who doesn't know better should be followed by anyone who wants to appear competent.

So, I fixed my handwriting font and I started following the rule. I don't use that font anymore, because I haven't done any Bird Feeder comics in a while, but I felt it was necessary.

I still wonder, however, why I never knew this fact up until that point. I was an adult, who had studied art at college and in high school and had been reading and making comics since I was a kid. How could I have missed it? Not only that, but I wonder how all these other cartoonists did know it. Where did they learn it from? I can guess syndicated cartoonists probably learned it from their editors, and some may have learned it in art school, or from other cartoonists they worked with before striking out on their own. But web cartoonists? Where did they learn it? It's a mystery to me. I guess that's the reason why the tweet was necessary in the first place. Most likely Otty Justason had seen a number of cartoonists not following the rule and felt the need to say something.

Regardless, I do think it's neat that a century-old rule that began in print comics has continued for this long and into the world of web comics. It's even easier to follow these days than it used to be. There are comic dialogue fonts available which are programmed to follow the rule. If you type the I by itself, it will automatically give you the crossbar version, and if it's within a word, it will automatically type the normal version. So there are no excuses for not following this rule anymore. In fact, there are places like Blambot that sell very affordable comic fonts that do this, and even offer some of them for free for independant webcomic projects.

So don't be me from the past. Learn from my mistakes. And never take Scott Adams seriously.

UPDATE: In fact, since I originally wrote this piece, Scott Adams has been fired by his syndicate for saying some incredibly racist things on his YouTube channel. So, all the more reason to not follow his lead on anything.