Playwrite VN

Children in Vietnam are never taught to write print letters. Since the 2002-03 school year, primary schools have followed 1 official handwriting model, the mẫu chữ thảo tiếng việt, and pupils go straight into joined cursive, upright first and sloped only if the teacher chooses. They drill the basic strokes beforehand. The lessons run from grade 1 to grade 3, and somewhere in primary school the pencil gives way to a fountain pen.

Playwrite VN is that model as a font. Veronika Burian and José Scaglione of TypeTogether built it from the upright, monolinear version, the one schools put first, and its shapes trace back to French vertical cursive: long ascenders and descenders, a round lowercase where every letter joins the next. It is 1 of the Playwrite school fonts, each generated from Primarium’s survey of how primary schools around the world teach handwriting.

Some letters to look for:

• b, r, v and w turn their strokes around with a small knot
• n and m start on a curved entry stroke
• x is made of 2 mirrored curves
• the capital S keeps its spine upright, while A, V and W come out triangular with a decorative edge

The joins depend on contextual alternates, so an app that ignores OpenType will set loose, unjoined letters; in Word, switch Contextual Alternates on in the advanced font settings. There is no bold or italic either, and the B button only smears a fake one.

4 weights, Thin to Regular. Classroom worksheets are the natural home, and a birthday card written out in Vietnamese would do fine too.