The book touches on typography in our daily lives, specifically why people dislike Comic Sans, Papyrus, and Trajan Capitals; the overwhelming European popularity of Helvetica; and how a font can make a person seem such a way, such as masculine, feminine, American, British, German, or Jewish.

[1] The first chapter, "We Don't Serve Your Type", is about why people dislike the font Comic Sans.

The New York Times praised the book, saying that it "does for typography what Lynne Truss's best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves did for punctuation" and that it is a "smart, funny, and accessible book".

[2] BBC declared it a "well-written, anecdote-filled romp through the highs and lows of fontdom".

[4] On the other hand, historian of typography Paul Shaw, in a review of the US edition, while admitting the book is "full of fascinating stories and trivia about type" stated that "[u]nfortunately, many of these stories are incomplete or superficial and the trivia often more odd than informative".