Playwrite CU Guides

A Cuban child learns 2 alphabets right from the start. Reading happens in print letters, geometric or grotesque sans serifs that stay the same from 1 textbook to the next, and writing happens in a fully joined cursive, and only the workbooks for handwriting and calligraphy use that second style. Playwrite CU Guides is the writing one.

Its models came from the United States. The Cuban cursive leans on the Palmer Method, which Austin Palmer devised, and on the Zaner-Bloser method, which Charles Paxton Zaner built up with Elmer Ward Bloser.

This Guides version draws ruled lines through every character, at the baseline, the x-height and the reach of ascenders and descenders, so a pupil sees how tall each stroke should go while tracing it. The underscore is a small trick for teachers. It prints the lines with no letter, a word space wide, and a row of them makes a blank practice line.

The design is Veronika Burian and José Scaglione’s, for TypeTogether’s Playwrite school fonts, which grew out of Primarium, a project that records how handwriting is taught in primary schools around the world. There is 1 Regular weight. The joins are made by contextual alternates, and 9 stylistic sets sit behind them; in Microsoft Word you have to turn contextual alternates on in the Advanced font settings, or the letters will not link up.