SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Sulla
Despite seeing it millions of times in pretty much every picture book, every novel, every newspaper and every email message, people are essentially unaware of the more common version of the lowercase print letter "g," Johns Hopkins researchers have found.
Most people don't even know that two forms of the letter -- one usually handwritten, the other typeset -- exist. And if they do, they can't write the typeset one we usually see. They can't even pick the correct version of it out of a lineup.
[...] Unlike most letters, "g" has two lowercase print versions. There's the opentail one that most everyone uses when writing by hand; it looks like a loop with a fishhook hanging from it. Then there's the looptail g, which is by far the more common, seen in everyday fonts like Times New Roman and Calibri and, hence, in most printed and typed material.
Source: http://releases.jhu.edu/2018/04/03/jhu-finds-letter-weve-seen-millions-of-times-yet-cant-write/
(Score: 1, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday April 06 2018, @06:59AM (35 children)
You guys don't learn cursive ? I thought that was a second-grade thing.
Oh wait .. It is a second-grade thing. I know because my kids did, but only a couple years after I taught them cursive anyway.
The non-cursive "closed loop" version is essentially the cursive one, just not attached to the other letters.
Dafuq is this all about ?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @07:16AM (3 children)
> Dafuq is this all about ?
Indeed. I use the closed-loop version myself (to distinguish it from my number 9), and I've never had any inquiries about it. Maybe it's a US-only problem, like guns or healthcare? *ducks*
BTW, my favorites are the handwritten lowercase letter "q" and the number "9". The way most people here in Japan write them, they look the same - the hook in 9 goes straight down, so it looks like q. Sometimes it's a problem when writing equations on a whiteboard. Surely you could ask which one it is, you say? Ah, but there's the kicker: in Japanese, they're both pronounced exactly the same: kyuu (キュウ).
How the hell did it happen that the old Japanese word for 9 is exactly the same as the English pronunciation of the letter q, is one of those linguistical mysteries that will forever elude our mortal comprehension :)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @08:21AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @09:38AM
Well, yeah, I meant "old" as in "before Western influence". Should've used "native". 反省.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @12:45PM
Show them the upper-case cursive "Q" and it will blow their minds!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by stretch611 on Friday April 06 2018, @07:41AM
Its all about a slow news day here on Soylent.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Friday April 06 2018, @07:49AM (1 child)
It's called PSYCHOLOGY. And it's our greatest science, it's the one that keeps our Country from turning into a shithole. It got me elected. Everybody's heard of Build the Wall, Lock Her Up, Drain the Swamp. People don't know this, we used Psychology for those. A little company called Cambridge Analytica, they tested those out. Psychology. And they told us which ads, which news, to put on the Social Media. We use Psychology when we do the extreme vetting, so we don't let in the immigrants who are going to turn into radical Islamic terrorists. We use Psychology when we torture the terrorists. So we always, always get the truth out of them before they lose their minds. And we use Psychology to decide what questions to put on our Census. And for the redistricting, the maps for the districts for Congress. So many times, Psychology makes the difference between WINNING & LOSING. So important!
(Score: 1) by gtomorrow on Friday April 06 2018, @03:10PM
Mod -1, Out of Character.
You used to be SO GOOD. I could read your posts hearing Trump's voice in my head, but as of late, less and less.
Best wishes, Mr. Baldwin.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by ledow on Friday April 06 2018, @08:21AM (13 children)
I learned cursive.
20+ years ago.
I couldn't care less. I literally lived virtually my entire adult life without having to pick up a pen except to make a signature or jot a post-it style note. I could operate in block capitals without significant effect.
I don't get why you'd WANT to write a typeset g - it's a typeset g for a reason, the same as a typeset ampersand & looks nothing like most people's handwritten version (which can just be a small loop).
Handwriting is dead and on its way out, why we continue to spend years of our children's best learning-absorption time on this nonsense, I can't fathom.
Question: Aside from thing YOU write to yourself, how much of the written content you see in your life is typeset versus cursive? Do you receive handwritten bills? Leaflets? Advertising? Websites? Control panel labels? Cursive novels? Handwritten CV's/resumes go in the bin at all the employers I've worked for. It's got to be way past 95% typeset for even the most technophobic of people unless they work in some niche art. Since Gutenberg, people haven't needed to write the majority of words that exist on paper. Nowadays, they aren't even on paper.
Cursive is a waste of time, and worrying how people write g has to be even worse. The fact that - on my screen - all the g's on Soylent are like my hand-written one is even funnier. I'm sure in the serif fonts, they do use the elaborate version but sans-serif tends not to. Does it matter? Not really. Hell, you could work it out from context in a matter of seconds even if you'd never seen Times New Roman before in your life.
Let's stop wasting our kids time worrying about how THEY write it (so long as they are able to write themselves a short note that should, ideally, be able to be read back) - being able (and being made) to read it several thousand times a day is much more important to their development than destroying their hands to enable them to write it.
I'd also like to point out that I graduated university. In maths. The one subject which I will force myself to pick up a pen and paper when things get complex because you CANNOT sketch mathematical notation simply without planning it out or having a large blank area free-form (sorry, but LaTeX / MathML are for presentation of result, actually doing maths more often requires chalk or pen). But that has nothing to do with cursive.
The last time I used a pen or pencil to write anything other than post-its / shopping lists in block capitals or a signature (that's worthless nowadays because everything is electronic and electronic signatures are basically pointless as they are just scribbles no matter how hard you try) was probably... god... can't even think... years. Maybe a decade. In fact, the last time was probably one of those electronic handwriting-capture pens for a tablet PC. That both dates it, and the fact that I haven't used it since because it was horrible tells you why we aren't all using them instead.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Friday April 06 2018, @09:07AM (9 children)
> Handwriting is dead and on its way out, why we continue to spend years of our children's best learning-absorption time on this nonsense, I can't fathom.
-Coordination eye hand
-Discipline
-Independence from electronic media
Kids today are basically retards in motor skills and with some exceptions are also dumb (don't show me stats, go see the schoolchildren production of yore instead). You know where they shine? Verbal skills. Now all we need to do is a society where your main occupation is being an actor. Can't do that? teach them to write.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @09:24AM (3 children)
I remember the Good Old Days of the Prussia-based American school system, where it still focused on mindless regurgitation of facts and blind obedience, and where the vast majority of the populace was still profoundly uneducated. But at least it didn't have No Child Left Behind! Therefore, since it was marginally better in one or maybe even a few aspects, it was overall good. Ah, the Good Old Days...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Friday April 06 2018, @11:55AM (2 children)
> Prussia-based American school system, where it still focused on mindless regurgitation of facts and blind obedience
the teacher was the god
the pupil knew it
the pupil did what the teacher wanted until he could break free
Now
the teacher is nothing
peer pressure is everything
peer pressure is not endogenous but driven by propaganda and marketing
the pupil does not know, nor do you
the pupil does what the system wants or suicides
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Informative) by acid andy on Friday April 06 2018, @01:40PM (1 child)
The teacher's pressure and the institutionalization that goes on in the school system breeds obedient subordinate workers. The market driven peer pressure breeds obedient consumerists. Both things benefit big business, largely at the expense of the individual's freedom, identity and emotional security.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Virindi on Friday April 06 2018, @04:20PM
Yes, obedient drones help BIG business. As in, large bureaucracies that mainly survive because of their bigness.
But it should be added that an obedient, nonquestioning populous hurts the actual market (price vs. quality ratio), and as well small and medium business. In small business being unable to think has a much bigger penalty.
In modern times we have "solved" this with the "huge hype = millions in startup VC" model. Yay.
Obedient drones also make uneducated customers of course. Which makes markets work less to drive positive change.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @09:25AM
Not actor, a manager. Good verbal skills and good political defence mechanisms is all you need to become a manager. Just pray the manufacturing jobs don't actually return to USA or you will have big social commotion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @09:31AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJJUbbnX4Gs [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @03:01PM (1 child)
If you want to teach your kids fine motor skills then use something fun, useful, or both. Cursive is neither fun nor useful. I expect it will become even less and less so, since I can write cursive but struggle to read any written more than a generation ago.
Maybe magic tricks? Slight of hand?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Osamabobama on Friday April 06 2018, @06:28PM
Calligraphy! Cursive may be obsolete, but calligraphy is still valued by some for its artistic merit.
Or, any other detailed art...
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday April 06 2018, @06:26PM
Kids
todayare basically retards in motor skills and with some exceptions are also dumb...There, fixed that for you.
(Score: 2) by carguy on Friday April 06 2018, @12:46PM
> Question: Aside from thing YOU write to yourself, how much of the written content you see in your life is typeset versus cursive?
Very little is cursive. But, the hand-written letters I receive from an older friend, by post, are among my most treasured. This guy traveled widely in Central and South America and tells wonderful stories. For one example, seeing a Ford Trimotor flying overhead while motorcycling in Mexico, finding the small airport where it landed and getting on the return flight--into a remote canyon which held one of the largest gold mines anywhere. He has lots of stories like that, one of those people that stumble onto adventures. The fact that his letters are in cursive adds immeasurably to his stories.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday April 06 2018, @07:03PM (1 child)
I'll admit this here... I could never learn cursive. There was a lot of screaming and crying because they thought I was just being obstinate. It took a few weeks of dealing with adults before they figured it out. I really couldn't make any sense of cursive whatsoever. I still can't. It's a foreign language to me, and I have zero problems walking over to somebody and telling them I've no fucking idea what they wrote. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, everything written in cursive, I just smile and say thank you. If it's important I find a friend and have them read it to me.
Cursive is fucking bizarre. As a result, I've only ever used printed characters my entire life, and my signature is a chaotic squiggle that is never the same, not even once.
So this article is incredibly confusing because it is asking about the print version, and not the cursive one right? I cannot make sense of it because I've rarely run into a font (other than the cursive fonts) that I cannot immediately see the letter g. As for the double loop version of the lower case g, yes, I have seen it and know what it is.
Pretty much at this point in my life, if it isn't printed with a terminal font, I find myself spending some time deciphering the symbols.
It goes without saying, that Arabic/Thai written languages are complete Greek to me :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday April 07 2018, @01:04AM
If it makes you feel any better, I often have the same problem despite learning cursive and being able to read it fine. If it's written well, it's fine, but what I noticed is that cursive has this weird "dialect" problem, where nearly everybody writes in their own custom version, with subtly (sometimes greatly) different letter shapes and odd little shortcuts. And the variations themselves differ from person to person, too: sometimes print characters get mixed in; sometimes the cursive letters only marginally resemble what they're supposed to; sometimes the letters are crammed together so tightly it looks like a bunch of curly loops with no meaning; and sometimes it's written at such an extreme left- or right-leaning slant that all the letters only barely resemble what they should.
Worse still, it's usually not just one thing. No, it's a mix-and-match of multiple variations, making someone else's cursive handwriting practically a foreign language, no matter how neat it is. Sure, some of it still happens with block print, but it seems like less of a problem overall for some reason. Might be because block print clearly distinguishes individual characters, compared to cursive's emphasis on writing entire words in a single long stroke. The latter makes it harder to determine where one letter ends and another begins, and probably also encourages sloppiness. Yes, when it's well-written, cursive has that pretty flowing lettering look to it, but making long sustained strokes like that is much harder to do neatly compared to short, decisive pen movements, and I think it makes the writing of people that don't hand-write constantly much worse compared to occasional block print usage. I'll admit that's just speculation on my part, but there are similar problems trying to draw long strokes with many curves vs. single decisive strokes when sketching, so it seems reasonable to me that similar difficulties occur when putting pen strokes to paper for a different purpose.
Only somewhat related, I've always had poor handwriting (both print and cursive), and it got worse as I started typing more than writing, but I eventually figured out that I could improve my printing greatly by focusing on accurately creating letter shapes instead of focusing on the words to write. Basically, I treat it more like "drawing" the characters instead of writing the words. It changed how I write and made a huge improvement to my legibility.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday April 06 2018, @08:28AM (7 children)
Topologically it's distinct, and it was never intended for cursive writing, it's more caligraphic. So all of the learning of cursive writing in the world would possibly never expose you to this version. So there's no reason *in this context* for your "don't lurn cursive" snark.
But of course there are the hybrids - this is more the closed loop version than the hook version, despite its lack of closed loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cheltenham_sample.svg
And then there are the cursive fonts - I'd say the closed loop here doesn't make it the closed loop version: https://www.dafont.com/img/charmap/s/p/spring_in_my_step1.png
And then there are decorative fonts - this differs in topology from both of their renderings (as does the previous one): http://txt.cdn.1001fonts.net/txt/dHRmLjcyLjAwMDAwMC5VbVZpWldOallTQlNaV2QxYkdGeS4x/rebecca.regular.png
So the researchers have their heads up their arses and are unable to step back from their field and approach it from a neutral and scientific perspective. There aren't "2 lower case gs", there is one, or there is an infinitude, that's it. Any number in between is arbitrary, and that includes 2. The fact that there are 2 common(ish) ones is mere happenstance. In some ways I'm not surprised; in my experience, typographers are notorious for coming up with some very bizarre assertions.
And if Garamond is such a great font, why is its italic 'g' completely different from roman 'g' (namely being the pair this article is about)? Ditto 'a'?
And how can you have an italic Times New Roman? That would be Times New Italic, surely? (OK, that one's just a silly pisstake rant.)
And the gothic fonts aren't gothic! (C.f. nuts not being "nuts", and berries not being "berries" in botany.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday April 06 2018, @08:33AM (4 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday April 06 2018, @09:05AM (3 children)
I'm pretty sure the template we (UK, 70s) were taught was the loop-through hook. Or maybe that's an implanted memory given how I now write. I will confess to have made some modifications to traditional cursive. My 'f' is a descender, not am ascender. Some fonts have it as both, which shows that I'm not too off base. I just felt it was too top heavy, being the only lower case hand-written character balancing on a single point, l and t have solid bases, so if p, q, and y can be descenders, it's more consistent to include f in that set. Similarly, none of the ascenders have anything apart from a simple up stroke in the ascender bit, so why should 'f' try to inject a curly bit up there. Inconsistency again, it needed simplifying. But that was only the start. I then introduced the loop-through hook from the g as the way of including the stroke, and I ended up with something that is a bit like a loopy descender 's'. Which being a descender and having the loop through hook a 'g' has makes it look quite 'g'-like (more the caligraphic version than the cursive versoin). "Bugger overglows", snigger. It's damn fast to write though, having only one back-track. Does it make my handwriting illegible to others? I hear you ask. No, my handwriting is almost entirely undecipherable anyway, one character makes no difference at all.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @11:32AM (2 children)
Similar for me (also in UK). Also taught joined-up handwriting (primary school, in the 90's), and I've also made modifications to some letters as how I write them, such as f, g and s. f is also a descender for me.
In fact, my cursive g with the joined loop is even further away from standard. Normally you enter the upper loop from the top i.e. clockwise, backtrack on yourself and go anti-clockwise, then backtrack on yourself again to draw the tail clockwise, and continue the loop to the next letter. Instead, I enter the upper loop from the bottom so anticlockwise, continue anticlockwise and complete the loop, and go straight into the bottom loop clockwise without any backtracking, simply because it's much faster to write. No backtracking at all. If anything, I've always felt the way I write my cursive g looks much more closer to the font-closed-loop-g then a normal cursive g does, and is still recognisable as a g.
There's another comment here somewhere where someone questioned why would anyone write "&" in full and not use the shorthand small loop. I've always written "&" in full because that's how I was initially taught and it became habit. Unlike "g", there's no jarring backtracking of the pen that makes the standard version feel slow when writing at speed.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday April 06 2018, @01:55PM (1 child)
I don't ever recall being taught it. I was also never taught the strokes to properly form capitals, only lower case writing. Everyone else I knew as a child would use a simple loop or even a '+' for an abbreviated 'and'. I disliked this so much that I carefully studied the printed ampersand and learnt to write it myself.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday April 06 2018, @03:07PM
I ws taught to write a stylised "Plus" sign instead of an ampersand. It started with the downstroke, then curved halfway back up and to the left, then finished with the horizontal stroke to the right. We were told (at primary school) that it was quicker and easier to write than an ampersand, and more people understood it.
That was bullshit on all counts. In my mid teens I did a complete revision of my handwriting font and one aim was to minimise reversals and pen liftings AFAP, for speed and smoothness. Even all my upper case chars can join to the following character. Among other things I therefore adopted the printed style of ampersand.
In fact my optimised writing looks rather old-fashioned, for example my capital "E" is like two stacked "U"s pointing to the right and my lower case "r" is like a lower case "n" with a tiny loop at the top left, as was used in copperplate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Friday April 06 2018, @01:47PM
I very much agree. I think you've expressed much of what I was trying to say, probably in a slightly more accurate way. I should have read your post before I wrote mine. Thank you.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @11:38PM
Hmm... looking in Windows charmap, it looks like the serif typefaces (Times New Roman, et al.) include the fancy lower-case g, while the sans serif typefaces do not.
I will argue that over the last few years, we're all getting used to "seeing" things in sans serif typefaces. Unless you've twiddled with the defaults on your web browser somehow to override things, you're probably seeing this website's content rendered in all its sans serif typeface family glory as well.
As far as cursive goes, the "fancy" g in the serif family typefaces is "backwards" for writing in cursive. Yes, I can write in cursive.
So the source article seems just a bit like the fisherman bragging to everyone he just caught the Big one, while everyone else around can see the old car tire hanging off the end of his line...
(Score: 4, Informative) by theluggage on Friday April 06 2018, @09:23AM
In typeset serif fonts the stem and loop on the “g” are completely different to a handwritten cursive g. Go look. See also lowercase a in most typeset fonts.
(Score: 3, Touché) by RS3 on Friday April 06 2018, @11:59AM
The dumbing down of the masses.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 06 2018, @02:11PM (1 child)
So, no, the schools in Florida haven't been teaching cursive for at least 10 years now... at least not the way they did 30 years ago. 30 years ago it was the mandatory form of writing from 3rd grade and up. 10 years ago it was more of a: here's another way of writing you might see... thing.
But, what I'm wondering is: are there any font-geeks who really care about this article? And, if so, isn't this like super-elementary font-geekery? Far below anything interesting to people who might be interested, I would think.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by gtomorrow on Friday April 06 2018, @03:21PM
Joe, I'm what you'd consider a font-geek but, no, this article is below my geekery. If we were discussing designing fonts, well, then yes...maybe.
Much as I am a "typophile" (goes with my professional territory) I don't give a rat's ass that people don't write out the two-storey lower-case "a" either.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday April 06 2018, @03:18PM
The cursive closed loop is attached at the right.
The type-set closed loop is attached at the left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @10:34PM
It's an article written by millennials. They are oblivious to handwriting, but are intensely interested in the potential for the letter "g" to be transgendered since it can appear with or without a dangly bit below the body.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Friday April 06 2018, @07:40AM (3 children)
The ability to read is based on pattern recognition and not so much on single letters as written. The fact that many (including myself) cannot identify a specific form of a typeset letter does not mean we cannot read or write (either by hand or machine). We learn to map a specific pattern read to a word/meaning. This enables us to read "fast". There has been other research into this, which exchanges letters within a wrod and we are still albe to see(interpret what the word is (supposed to be).
Mapping the recognized pattern back to its constituent parts (the letters) is not a task that is practiced as much as the other way around. We read more than we write. But even with writing, we use patterns to write. You have a "program" to activate muscles to write a specific phrase/syllable and construct a word and sentence from learned sequences. It is when we start looking back that we can see errors and analyze what we've done in letter-detail (modern days: we see the wavy red line under the word in machine-writing with spell-checker enabled and try to fix the problem).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday April 06 2018, @08:40AM (1 child)
One of the great strengths of English is its information density, or redundancy, things written with mistakes can and will be automatically corrected upon reading.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Friday April 06 2018, @10:16AM
I fully agree.
The long-word problem is usually solved by the field-of-vision, where you "see" the constituent parts of a long word separately (Danish is another example that can create very long words). The constituents form yet another pattern template, which then is interpreted.
This actually leads to quite funny mistakes while reading. When you combine smaller words into a long one, then your pattern recognition system may fail if the long word can be "broken" into pieces at several distinct places, creating a different meaning while still making sense on some other level. This is where you have to stop reading and re-read the word's constituent parts to make sense out of it in the sentence's context.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Friday April 06 2018, @02:55PM
Yeah just because we can recognize something doesn't mean we can draw it from scratch. Whether it's a typographical character or a human face.
http://www.caltech.edu/news/single-cell-recognition-halle-berry-brain-cell-1013 [caltech.edu]
Perhaps the way it works is as if the sensory and other neurons are "reading out numbers" in a Bingo Hall of the brain and when the right numbers are read the Halle Berry (or "g" letter) neurons yell out "BINGO! Halle Berry!" and most of the rest of the neurons go "OK, I guess that's Halle Berry".
But to actually draw Halle Berry takes a lot more coordination and effort from a lot more neurons and possibly a different set of neurons. After all when I think g while typing vs when I think g while writing, the "concept g" neurons are probably mostly the same but the output neurons are different depending on whether I'm typing or writing. And when I think and type "might" far fewer neurons might be thinking of the letter g but it still gets typed :).
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday April 06 2018, @11:46AM
Does anyone know everything?
You know what you need to know, or you find out.
If you don't need to know the earth goes round the sun, why bother learning/retaining it?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Friday April 06 2018, @12:05PM (7 children)
I'm willing to be that if they'd phrased their questions more helpfully, a lot more of the participants would have got what they were referring to. I see this kind of thing so often in academia. The students are asked a question for which the answer, to most, is a very obvious fact once revealed. Usually this is accompanied by the lecturer's insistence that "This is not a trick question!" What normally happens is that most of the students can't come up with an answer because they adopt the reasonable assumption that most academic questions presented to them require a lot of thought or the knowledge of a little known fact. For this reason, I imagine most people ruled out the answer having to do with serif versus sans serif differences. They call it a "print variety" but even to me that hints at a stronger difference than simply the style of the typeface. People probably thought they were asking about two distinct Unicode characters. I bet if they'd phrased it in terms of the serif version having a different geometry to the sans serif, more would have got it.
It's all a bit silly. Wouldn't they have a very similar reaction if asked the same question about the letter 'a', for example?
The above sentence in TFA is so vague I'd say it's wrong. If we're comparing serif to sans serif, every character has two print versions. If we're talking about the geometric differences once the serifs are stripped from the serif font, there will still be subtle differences probably with every character. That's the nature of fonts. It's a fuzzy, social science question. The most unscientific thing is that the question was so badly formed. Anyway, I've wasted far too much of my time on this crap.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @01:59PM
I do agree with your statement. This above question would get me to answer Gg and Jj. since they they both make same to similar sounds in words.
Ga = Ja, Je = Ge
But then again my last name, most no one can pronounce correctly... it has a gl in it, most people read the g as silent or even as another letter like r or l.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @02:51PM
Unless they were specifically asking front-end software developers or typesetters, it's very likely that not a single one of those people knows anything about Unicode, serif, and sans serif.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Friday April 06 2018, @04:01PM (2 children)
Maybe half of the respondents have never learned to type on a typewriter, and didn't know that "lowercase" is the default and "uppercase" makes the klonking sound when you press the shift key hard and the metal thingy shifts almost a centimeter down so that the top letter is positioned to whack the ink tape.
Anyway, I prefer Baskervald ADF [www.tug.dk]. It's a serif, with beautiful but not excessively baroque Qs and gs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @06:09PM (1 child)
A centimeter?? Just how big was the typewriter you were using??
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Friday April 06 2018, @07:40PM
sigh. between 5 mm and 1 cm then. I don't remember, I was 12.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday April 06 2018, @06:42PM
If somebody writes down the wrong version of the letter, the problem is likely to include the way they discarded data. The task was to write down the letter, but that doesn't mean the bitmap of the representation of that letter (to most people). It may be case sensitive, but beyond that, extra information is not needed. It's a 'g'.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by forkazoo on Friday April 06 2018, @08:18PM
When I am thinking of letters that have multiple forms, should I could Latin script / Roman alphabet letters that look just like Cyrillic letters as distinct from their counterparts in the other script? Eh, Unicode has different code points for them, so I'll count them as distinct even if they look similar. What about Icelandic? That's almost exactly the same alphabet as English, except for eth and thorn. I think I'll count the overlapping sections of Icelandic and English alphabets as the same. What about diacritical marks? Extended ASCII systems usually did accented characters as distinct codepoints, but Unicode says they are just joiners on a consistent character. Does a letter plus an accent joiner count as a "different way of writing" that character?
There's basically now ay I'd know they were talking about teh fact that they noticed two different forms of lowercase g from their question. There's not nearly enough context. I think the more interesting result isn't "people don't know what g looks like" as it is "studies are sometimes based on questions that fail to get at what people are trying to understand."
(Score: 3, Informative) by Wootery on Friday April 06 2018, @02:58PM (2 children)
They chose to scale-down the image that shows at a glance what it is they're talking about, [jhu.edu] to the point that I can't read the upside-down text saying which one they mean. How unhelpful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)
It's the one with downstroke on the left (downstroke joins the two loops) and serif pointing to the right.
I, my wife, and my daughter all took guesses this morning about which it was: we each picked a different character, for seemingly good reasons, and all three of us were wrong. I'm sure that there are historical reasons for the typeset g to look like that, but they don't make sense to anyone in my family.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday April 09 2018, @08:50AM
The top right one, then. Wasn't that easier?
Amusingly, they changed the image! It now references this JPG [jhu.edu], much higher resolution that the one they embedded originally, which is no longer embedded but which is still available at its URL. It's now clear that it says Answer: Top right.
I would've guessed the bottom right one - I join you in the 'wrong' camp.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Friday April 06 2018, @04:05PM (2 children)
You can mangle the central letters of a word, as long as the front & back letter remain the same we generally do quite a good job at understanding the word/reading it. Our pattern recognition for letters in a similar fashion doesn't work as we'd expect. So many letters have small variances in their appearances we really shouldn't be surprised by these findings.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @06:18PM
No, that is not generally true [cam.ac.uk], just in that Internet example that was really popular 2003.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @07:56PM
What surprised me is that you didn't work in any angles about minorities or gender identification.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 06 2018, @09:28PM
Oh revelation. After several centuries of various typefaces, John Hopkins UNIVERSITY figured out there are TWO forms of the letter "g".
In further shocking news, TWO forms of "a" and then TWO forms of "r" also exist. Post-grad students are hard at work on their thesis!
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday April 07 2018, @11:58AM (5 children)
English Roundhand, Spencerian and Palmer's business penmanship... People didn't write two-story a's and g's in the real world (i.e. cursive). And with D'Nealian fixing the g-vs-q problem by flipping q's tail, they most definitely don't do it nowadays even if they're still writing cursive for some odd reason.
Admittedly, it's ironic variants meant to make letters more distinguishable in penmanship ended up type-exclusive. But that's just how it went.
So really, why should anyone be aware of two-story g's and a's as anything but type variants nowadays is beyond me.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 07 2018, @01:59PM (3 children)
People absolutely did write two-story g's and a's in the real world, likely beginning with Uncial and Carolingian variants over a thousand years ago. They were part of various manuscript handwriting styles for many centuries (though the placement of the descender to the bottom loop of the g migrated all over the place depending on the script, but seems to have become standardized on the left in modern type).
You're right that the two-story variants weren't as popular once modern "cursive" forms emerged, though earlier secretarial hands sometimes incorporated them.
Anyhow, none of this disputes your argument that most people shouldn't care about these things. But the type forms were actually derived from handwritten forms in the "real world."
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday April 07 2018, @09:36PM (2 children)
I specifically said "real world (i.e. cursive)" to denote correspondence and other day-to-day writing from manuscripts and even gave a long list of such "methods". The article discusses people's inability to identify double-story g's as a letter form, and my argument is that it isn't a letter form but a type variant. That is, it's not part of a penmanship script method that people used daily, but a part of a typographic fonts and calligraphic scripts. i.e. A king drafting their scribbles to Italian hand or something by a professional scribe to be lettered or something doesn't count as "real world (i.e. cursive)" in my view.
Regarding D'Nealian, compare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian [wikipedia.org] ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cursive.svg [wikipedia.org] or https://www.rainbowresource.com/proddtl.php?id=012720) [rainbowresource.com]
https://archive.org/details/PalmersPenmanshipBudget [archive.org] (p.16)
and the Zaner stuff...
And you'll find the q's used to be mostly only distinguishable from the g's via their tails since consistency meant keeping all your letters using the same width in copperplate-derived penmanship scripts with very few exceptions before D'Nealian. It didn't matter to calligraphic and type fonts since the consistency was good. But, in the penmanship scripts used in academic/business settings (tests / homework / meetings notes), people tend to write sloppy and end up making all their q's look like g's as they don't return the tail curve back to the base line. Ironically, the double-story lettering was probably an attempt at making the problem vowels and constants (g and a) more legible but it never caught on in penmanship scripts and was mostly a niche in calligraphic scripts and type fonts since it wasn't really necessary there to begin with.
Anyhow, I think I saw a penmanship book with double-story g's and a's once but it wasn't a popular (i.e. limited print and wasn't taught in any school) method. Again, all in the context of penmanship as opposed to typographic fonts and calligraphic scripts. And again, all mostly redundant since you don't actually have any good reason to write cursive with a ballpoint pen so we're really just splitting hairs...
compiling...
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 08 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)
I don't want to get into an argument, but your reply confuses me even more.
I wouldn't call Roundhand, Spencer, and Palmer a "long list." Those are only the most commonly known modern scripts in American calligraphy today. There are a LOT of other historical variants. And I don't think "real world" necessarily implies that you were intending to exclude handwriting in more formal contexts. To me, it just implies "real world," i.e., as opposed to some sort of "theoretical" handwriting that never was actually used but which only gets used in type.
Anyhow, again, that's not meant to be argumentative. Your reply is argumentative, but if you look back on what you wrote, I think my understanding of what you were saying was reasonable.
And regardless, you're still wrong. Double-looped g's and a's with the ascending loop were definitely part of many handwriting styles that were the immediate predecessors of modern cursive scripts. I don't claim to be an expert on paleography, but I believe they fell out of use mostly by the 1700s, but they were definitely found in many "everyday" script variants in earlier centuries, even those used outside of formal manuscript writing in books. Even after writing becomes more common (as a learned skill) after the more widespread availability of paper beginning in the late 1400s, everyday scripts frequently used such variants of a and g. In fact, even "cursive" forms of the double-looped g occur, where g often resembles a sort of vertical "figure 8."
While there are more detailed resources out there on all this, you might just have a look at this diagram [pinterest.es], which apparently was prepared in the late 1700s as a guide to reading old scripts. The many forms of a and g (and lots of other letters) are clear there. Scripts varied a LOT over the centuries.
Also, I'd take a little issue with the idea things like idealized Spencerian and Roundhand represented the "real world." Yes, they were taught to educated folks and business writers, but the idealized forms seen in textbooks and used by calligraphers were not necessarily representative of how "real people" wrote in the "real world," often including a lot more personal variants and simplifications unless they were intending to be "formal" in their writing style.
As for D'Nealian, I really don't understand your argument AT ALL. This is what you put in your first post:
I replied:
Then you most recently said:
Huh? You first said D'Nealian flipped the tail of q to make it distinguishable from g. Now you said the tails were the ONLY way to distinguish them in older styles!? I'm utterly baffled by your argument flip-flopping here. Either admit you misspoke in your first post or admit you don't really know what you're talking about.
As I said, these variants first developed over a thousand years ago and were commonly encountered in many handwriting styles for centuries. It's only the past 300 years or so of penmanship (which you seem more familiar with) when they fell out of use. That's okay -- you're not expected to know about very old scripts. Few people do. But such letterforms WERE used in the real world, and they certainly weren't "niche," particularly in type (where they became standard).
If you want to claim the double-storey a's and g's are archaisms, preserved mostly in typeset print rather than in handwriting, I'll agree for the most part. Though even that statement is only true of the g's; the ascending half-looped a was frequently taught in lettering classes (my father was a draftsman back in the days when things were still prepared by hand and was taught to use a looped a). Not "cursive" styles admittedly, but definitely in use in handwriting in the "real world."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @01:13PM
Follow the links and reread the post. The way the q is distinguished from the g is only through the tail. But in fast cursive writing, the q become indistinguishable from the g without flipping the tail since people don't return the curve to where the stem intersected with the base line as they should.
Just look at the lettering and write them a few times and you'll see the problem.
As for the two-story issue, since lower-case cursive scripts must be continues by definition, double a's and g's introducing direction changes or tip-off-paper that render the script non-cursive by definition. The double a's specifically requires a fine tip, medium sized lettering and careful (slow) writing to produce a smaller-then-height oval to distinguish it from o's.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 07 2018, @02:08PM
Also, I don't understand your comment about D'Nealian "flipping q's tail."
Lowercase q in D'Nealian has the same orientation of tail seen in Palmer, Spencerian, Roundhand, etc. (though depending on variant, sometimes q had less of a distinguishable loop at all). In any case, I don't see what D'Nealian has done to make g vs. q any different or more distinctive.