Lettering is the most under-appreciated craft in comics. When it is done well, readers never notice it — the words simply flow into their heads in the right order. When it is done badly, it stops the story cold. Here are the conventions that keep dialogue readable.
Reading order comes first
Within a panel, speech bubbles are read the same way as the page: top to bottom, left to right. That means the first person to speak gets the upper-left bubble, and the conversation flows down and across. If two characters talk and you place the replier's bubble above the speaker's, you force the reader to jump backward — a small snag that accumulates into confusion over a page. Plan your bubble positions before you finalize the art, and leave room for them at the top of the panel where they naturally sit.
Tails point to the speaker
The tail is the little pointer that connects a bubble to whoever is talking. It should aim clearly at the speaker's head or mouth, and — importantly — tails should never cross. Crossed tails are the visual equivalent of two people talking over each other; the reader can't tell who said what. In Striply you can drag the tail tip to the speaker and even add a second tail from one bubble when two characters say the same thing in unison.
Bubble shape carries meaning
The outline of a bubble tells the reader how a line is spoken, before they read a word:
- Rounded / oval — normal speech. Your default.
- Cloud (thought bubble) — internal thoughts, unspoken.
- Spiky / burst — shouting, alarm, or a voice over a phone or radio.
- Dashed / wavy (whisper) — quiet or trailing-off speech.
- Rectangular caption box — narration or a character's voice-over, usually placed at a corner of the panel rather than tailed to a mouth.
Striply offers all of these as shape presets, so you can switch a bubble from speech to thought to shout without redrawing it.
Choose a legible font
Comic lettering has its own typographic traditions. The text should be a clean, comic-style face — never a stiff office font like Times or Arial, which read as flat and lifeless in a hand-drawn medium. Fonts like Comic Neue, Bangers, or a hand-lettered style sit far more naturally. Keep dialogue around 12–16 px so it is comfortable at reading size, and keep it consistent from panel to panel.
Why comics use ALL CAPS
Traditional Western comics letter dialogue in all capitals, and it is not an accident. Uppercase hand-lettering is more uniform and easier to read at small sizes, avoids the ambiguity of a lowercase “l” versus a capital “I,” and gives the classic comic-book look. There is one famous exception: a lowercase “i” is sometimes kept for emphasis. If you want an authentic Western feel, turn on the ALL CAPS option; manga and many webcomics use mixed case instead, so match the convention to your style.
Give the words room to breathe
Leave a comfortable margin of empty space inside each bubble — text jammed against the outline feels claustrophobic. Break lines so the bubble forms a pleasing oval rather than a long sausage, and never let a bubble grow so large it swallows the art. Lettering and layout are partners: the best pages plan for the words from the very first sketch.
Practice on a real panel: open the editor, add two characters' worth of dialogue, and check that a stranger could read it in the right order without you explaining it.