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Crossed Lowercase q
Posted by Ryan Maelhorn in
8 Dec 2012 — 10:01am
8 Dec 2012 — 10:01am
Anybody ever seen this before, and/or know what face(s) it originates from?
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8 Dec 2012 — 10:05am
(NOTE: I'm not looking for a font ID of this font, this is cropped from a picture I just saw and is the first and only time I've ever seen this)
8 Dec 2012 — 10:21am
Looks like someone just typed an underscore over the q.
8 Dec 2012 — 10:57am
I don't think so, Chris. The bar is too narrow and too carefully balanced on the stem to be an underscore.
8 Dec 2012 — 11:31am
I can't say I've seen it in a typeface, but that's the standard handwritten 'q' here in Norway, and I guess the other Nordic countries too.
Edit: Or at least that's how we learnt to write 'q's in the 70s. No idea if it's still taught like that.
8 Dec 2012 — 11:43am
Some people do this in handwriting because it helps differentiate q from g. Scroll through a MyFonts search for "casual script" and see how many you can spot. Look also for the variant where the crossing stroke leads up to start the u.
8 Dec 2012 — 11:57am
Yeah I doubt it's an underscore, knowing the source of this pic, it's just really hard to believe the "designers" would have taken the time to do something like that.
Anybody know when this first appeared? Any scribal instances of it?
8 Dec 2012 — 12:00pm
Cerulean: Or from 9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_handwriting_variation
8 Dec 2012 — 12:07pm
Recent example from Norway:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nR1srWAslfo/TwY0p-ET_pI/AAAAAAAACqc/X5Wq7ESGj3...
8 Dec 2012 — 12:22pm
I've written lowercase q with a crossed descender since I was in college, and that's a long damn time. I can't remember anyone teaching me to make q's that way, but I surely didn't invent it. I either saw it printed that way, or saw it in someone else's handwriting. I picked up the habit of crossing my 7's (considered an affectation here in the US) from a friend of mine around the same time, and maybe he crossed his q's too.
8 Dec 2012 — 2:39pm
And here's Nicholas Jenson, with a crossed p, as a sign of elision, I think.
http://www.noamberg.com/thesis/blowrg/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/origina...
8 Dec 2012 — 3:23pm
as a sign of elision
Specifically, an abbreviation for per.
13 Dec 2012 — 1:08am
It's very standard in written Spanish (Spain, at least) to cross the q in handwriting, though it drives my (American) students crazy. It was used in printing as an abbreviation for cuan or cual at one point but that was several centuries ago.