Tropes that occur in media relating to how letters and symbols appear, from Fonts to title text. Text Formatting Rules for this site are here.
See also: Para Text.
Tropes:
- Acquired Error at the Printer: A small mistake made by a printing service leads to large embarrassment for the customer.
- all lowercase letters: the letters of an object or person are intentionally lowercase.
- Alt Text: Comic strips that often have context or an extra gag to go along with the comic.
- The Annotated Edition: Books and other pieces of written text that have annotations for non-english speakers, or to justify certain additions to the text.
- Anthropomorphic Typography: Anthropomorphic letters, numbers, music notes, and other typography.
- The Backwards Я: Placing a Cyrillic letter to denote a certain setting ("Я" to denote a Russian setting), regardless of context.
- Bold Inflation: When writers misuse bold fonts to get the reader to see specific text as important to the story, but comes off as actively hampering the readers' experience.
- Boss Subtitles: When an antagonist appears, a caption bearing their name and a brief description of them is briefly shown.
- Calculator Spelling: Someone writes something (usually silly or inappropriate) by typing numbers on a calculator and turning it upside-down.
- Capital Letters Are Magic: Capitalising words to make a news one.
- Caps Lock: The key on the keyboard that lets you speak in ALL-CAPS. Use wisely.
- Censored Title: When the title of a work is censored for some reason.
- Clue from Ed.: Comics feature footnotes explaining when mentioned events happened so that new comic readers who didn't read the earlier issues aren't left in the dark.
- Colon Cancer: When too many colons are used in a work.
- Color-Coded Speech: Using different colors of text or speech bubbles to differentiate between speakers.
- Counting to Potato: Someone counts in an incorrect or nonsensical manner by listing numbers out of order or substituting numbers with random words.
- Diagonal Billing
- Double X
- Dramatic Ellipsis
- Dub Text
- Emphasize EVERYTHING
- Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: When the characters are speaking a foreign language and have subtitles translating their dialogue, eventually the translator just gives up.
- Expo Label: A very obvious and/or extremely specific label, so the audience knows exactly what the labelled thing does.
- Fan Sub
- Flavor Text
- Fonts
- Font Anachronism
- Footnote Fever: Excessive 1 use of footnotes 2 in text 3
- Foreign-Looking Font: English text in a style that resembles a non-Roman alphabet, to make it clear this is a foreign land but without requiring the audience to know how to read the language.
- The Foreign Subtitle
- Freeze-Frame Introduction: Characters get introduced with a still frame and a label with their character name.
- Fun with Alphabet Soup: Soup that can be used in place of writing.
- Fun with Subtitles: The translating subtitles are used in a humorous manner.
- Gag Sub: The subtitles used for a work are made funnier by not even trying to accurately translate the foreign dialogue.
- Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut
- In-Scene Title Text
- Interactive Fiction
- Keywords Conversation
- Leet Lingo: Using numbers and symbols to spell words.
- Let X Be the Unknown: The letter X is used to represent mysteriousness.
- Letters 2 Numbers: Using numbers as a substitute 4 letters.
- Lucky Charms Title
- Magick
- Myspeld Rökband: A rock band has a name that is intentionally misspelled.
- No Punctuation Period
- Note from Ed.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe
- Onscreen Chapter Titles
- Opening Scroll
- Partially-Concealed-Label Gag: A character misjudges the meaning of a sign/label due to parts of it being covered from their sight.
- Phantasy Spelling
- Pictorial Letter Substitution: Replacing a letter (or part of a letter) with an image of something else with a similar shape.
- Pop-Up Trivia
- Punctuation Changes the Meaning
- Punctuation Shaker: Exo'tic n'ames sou'nd be'tter whe'n sprin'kle'd g'enerou'sly wi'th a'postrop'hes.
- Rainbow Speak: Important words are highlighted in different colors.
- Randomly Reversed Letters
- Read the Fine Print
- Reality Has No Subtitles: For realism, a work does not feature any translation for characters speaking foreign languages.
- Red-and-White Comedy Poster
- Scare Quotes
- Scrolling Text
- Speaking in Panels
- Speech Bubbles: Comics tend to have character dialogue in white bubbles that have tails pointing at which characters are saying the dialogue.
- Speech-Bubble Censoring: Speech bubbles are used to censor nudity.
- Speech-Bubbles Interruption: Speech bubbles covering up other text.
- Spice Up the Subtitles: For whatever reason, translators choose to make the subtitles more profane than the actual language that was used.
- Subbing Versus Dubbing: The debate on whether it's better to translate a foreign work by adding subtitles translating the dialogue or by having the work dubbed over by actors speaking the language of the country the work is being localized for.
- Subtitles Are Superfluous: The pitfalls that may come from the decision to give a video game subtitles or to not bother with them.
- Symbol Swearing: Depicting the !@%&#$ing swearing in symbols rather than text.
- Text Parser
- Textplosion: A comic's panels are suddenly filled with text before reverting to illustrations.
- Thinking the Same Thought
- Tricked into Signing
- Think in Text
- Thought Caption
- Title In
- Translation Punctuation
- Typeset in the Future: Eurostile, Microgamma, Bank Gothic and similar fonts are used to make it clear this is the future.
- Unconventional Formatting
- Unreadable Disclaimer
- Unreadably Fast Text
- Unsound Effect
- Visible Silence
- Wall of Blather
- Wall of Text
- Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma
- Wingdinglish: ∧ ⊔∈<⊣∈‡≥∧⋄ ⋄∧≥⊏⊥∧⊏⊓ ∈⊢ ⊂∅∈⊣⊣⊓≥ ∈≥ ⊓≥⊏⋄∈⊢⊐ ⊂∈⊣⊐ ⊂⊓∈∅> ⊢⋃≤⋁‡⋄⊢ ∧⊢ ⊔‡≥⊣.*
- Written Roar
- Written Sound Effect: Onomatopoeia is used for actions that can't really be heard.
- "X" Makes Anything Cool
- Xtreme Kool Letterz
