[Andrew999]

Today marks the 125th anniversary of the generally agreed first use of speech balloons in a comic strip - that was in Yellow Kid:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yellow_Kid

Of course, speech balloons were used in various ways before that - political or satirical pamphlets and so on.

What's interesting is how everyone pretty much uses the same standard for speech balloons - continuous tail for speech, bubble tail for thought and so on - odd that so few deviate from that.

What's even odder is that I still prefer captions beneath the image - so that the image isn't corrupted - but I'm guessing I'm pretty much in the minority over that

[The Australian Panther]

everyone pretty much uses the same standard for speech balloons - continuous tail for speech, bubble tail for thought and so on - odd that so few deviate from that.

I will go out on a limb and say that format was probably dictated by the Hearst Syndicate [King Features] to all their contracted creators and became standard across the industry from its usage in Newspaper Strips. [Hearst himself was a huge believer in comics, used to read them himself. Like them big and in colour.] If it wasn't for the fact that he liked it, we wouldn't have Krazy Kat. For that I can forgive him a lot. 
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/hearst_wr.htm

Thanks to his efforts all rival newspapers in the world had to have their own comics pages.   

  Intellectual Snobbery and Ignorance are the main reasons comics shrank or disappeared from newspapers from the 70's on. 


And the reason most everybody uses it? Because it works and immediately connects the speaker in the strip with what is being said. Adds an extra dimension that commentary only doesn't have. It distances you from the story.
Although Prince Valiant didn't use it, and to my knowledge still doesn't. 

Cheers!

[narfstar]

I have seen some differences in word balloons some pretty dramatic. I prefer variety. The true intellectual snobbery it the injunction against using the capital I with bars except when using it as a pronoun. They consider someone an inferior and uninformed letterer who does not follow the convention. With better printing there is no reason to capitalize everything either. There needs to be a letterer rebellion against doing things just because.

[paw broon]

Word balloons have been around for a long time, as Andrew notes, political or satirical pamphlets etc.  Old British weeklies, some of which we have on CB+, as far back as pre WW1, use word balloons, but mostly in conjunction with a text box beneath each panel (occasionally, you find them above the panel).  I think, given time I could find examples of word balloons even before those we have here.
What I find difficult are the manga balloons with their tiny tails, so that I sometimes can't figure out right away who's talking.  And that just interrupts the flow of the story.  not that I read many manga.
Prince Valiant never used word balloons and is an example of a text strip, albeit a very sophisticated one in terms of layout.
Narf, that is a new one on me, so thanks for the information.  I'll be looking out for examples.
It could be because I was brought up with text strips, or that mixture of text and balloons, but I like that style.  I'm particularly fond of the true text strip.  Some very fine art and storytelling appears in text strips.
One of the finest British examples is Black Bob. As this is a classic DCT strip, I shouldn't really post this link, but I think it's worth the risk:-
https://www.facebook.com/pg/FriendsofJohnHunter/photos/?ref=page_internal

[SuperScrounge]

One balloon style I don't like is the inverted tail. I've seen this in manga-inspired comics and is used for off-panel speakers and, unhelpfully points into the word balloon.

Personally when I have an off-panel speaker I just draw the tail pointing to the panel border where the characters is 'behind'.