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posted by chromas on Friday April 06 2018, @06:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the double-storey dept.

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/


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  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday April 07 2018, @01:59PM (3 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Saturday April 07 2018, @01:59PM (#663735) Journal

    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."

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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday April 07 2018, @09:36PM (2 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Saturday April 07 2018, @09:36PM (#663814)

    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...

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    compiling...
    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 08 2018, @01:12PM (1 child)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Sunday April 08 2018, @01:12PM (#663922) Journal

      I don't want to get into an argument, but your reply confuses me even more.

      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".

      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:

      And with D'Nealian fixing the g-vs-q problem by flipping q's tail

      I replied:

      Lowercase q in D'Nealian has the same orientation of tail seen in Palmer, Spencerian, Roundhand, etc.

      Then you most recently said:

      And you'll find the q's used to be mostly only distinguishable from the g's via their tails

      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.

      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.

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 19 2018, @01:13PM (#669073)

        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.