Stefani Arzonetti Hite

Educational fonts by Educational Fontware, Inc. Single font package, single user license, US$49.95. Additional specialty font package, US$10.00. Single font package site licenses, US$250.00. Available in Macintosh and Windows versions.

As an elementary level teacher, I have often been frustrated by the teaching of handwriting. It's not my favorite thing to do, and I'd rather teach writing in the context of offering other areas of the curriculum. Unfortunately, my school district mandates that we use D'Nealian manuscript and cursive. Because there are few fonts available in school styles, I could not create student materials that consistently offered print in the style that my class was supposed to be learning -- and I was supposed to be teaching.

A shareware copy of "school fonts" crossed my desk a while back, and that seemed to solve part of my problem. It offered block text, "slanted" (modern manuscript, or D'Nealian style), and cursive. The problem is with the cursive. It isn't a true representation of cursive writing. The letters are linked in a convenient "middle ground," which is not how cursive letters actually flow together. This presents a dilemma -- especially for teachers wanting to give students practice in reading cursive, not just in writing it.

However, Educational Fontware has developed a family of typefaces for educators. They include D'Nealian, Zaner-Bloser (both pre- and post-1994), Harcourt Brace, McDougal Littell, and Peterson -- so all the major styles are covered. The unique characteristic of the cursive members of these fonts is the ability to authentically link the letters using a program that accompanies the fonts. It's a cumbersome extra step (text must be cut, program run, text pasted back in place) but necessary to create a "true" cursive writing style.

The fonts conveniently come with additions to the families that allow for typing with and without rules and with letter forms made up of dots or outlines to provide student tracing practice. Some have arrows to indicate pencil path. For an additional $10.00, there is also a useful package of specialty fonts including ball and stick print, Braille, ASL finger letters, Morse code, picture phonics, emotion faces, and analog clock faces.

Despite the cumbersome "linkletter" program that must be run to join the cursive letters, Educational Fontware has developed a package that is truly useful to elementary level educators. In fact, a third-grade teacher recently used the font to type a science review for her students and said, "They couldn't believe it!" And she was thrilled to be able to incorporate handwriting meaningfully and effectively into part of the curriculum.

Stefani Arzonetti Hite (e-mail: ghite@mciunix.mciu.k12.pa.us) is a classroom teacher and technology coordinator in the Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, USA, school district.