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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: 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...