The SA fonts are designed in strict accordance with the current South Australian Modern Cursive style as originally specified in Handwriting – South Australian Modern Cursive published by the Education Department of South Australia,1983, Reprinted 1996 (ISBN 0 7243 7173 7) and more recently described in Handwriting in the South Australian Curriculum 2nd Edition * published by the Education Department of South Australia, 2007 (ISBN 1 9212 3305 2). Where there are discrepancies between these two documents (eg the height of the numbers) the more recent document takes precedence.
South Australian Modern Cursive is the recommended style for South Australia as well as some schools in WA.
The unjoined form of the South Australian style is SA Beginner GT. The transitional SA PreCursive GT is also unjoined but the letters have cursive entries and exits which the writer needs to master as they move towards fully joined writing.
The weight of the Regular fonts is intended to match the average pen thickness of the illustrations in Handwriting in the South Australian Curriculum 2nd Edition. The Thick weight is approximately 170% of the Regular weight as per common typographic practice.
The SA Beginner GT fonts are available as Regular (with and without directional arrows), OutIined (with and without directional arrows), Dotted (with and without directional arrows) and Thick. The SA PreCursive GT fonts are available as Regular, Thick and OutIined. These 10 fonts plus PDF Manual comprises the Beginner Pack.
When fully joined, the PreCursive becomes the South Australian Modern Cursive style. The automatically-joining fully cursive font SA Cursive GT Pro is available as a separate package with its own Manual. The SA Cursive GT Pro font is supplied in one weight which is slightly thinner than the stand-alone SA Beginner GT-Regular and SA PreCursive GT-Regular fonts to reflect the fact that, by the time the student begins cursive writing, they will be probably be using more refined writing implements such as ball-point pens etc. Also, the lighter weight allows the cursive joins to be displayed more accurately and clearly. There are no Thick, Outlined, Dotted or Directional Arrow versions in the SA Cursive GT Pro font.
The SA Cursive GT Pro font is a sophisticated OpenType font that will only function to its full potential in applications which are OpenType-aware and which recognize special OpenType features called Stylistic Sets. At present, the list of such applications is limited mainly to Microsoft Word and Publisher (2010/2011 & later), Apple Pages (v5.6 & later), Adobe InDesign, Quark XPress (2016 & later), CorelDRAW (X6 & later), Sketch and TextEdit. Note that the current versions of Word and Publisher only support the use of one Stylistic Set at a time providing basic joining functionality but limiting the full capabilities of the font. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (up to and including CC) do not support Stylistic Sets.
The SA Cursive GT Pro font does not require the use of any external utility or application to create the cursive joins between letters – the joining is completely automatic, occurring in real time as letters are typed. All you need to do is select the joining level you want (see the Manual's Quick Start Guide) and start typing!
The SA Cursive GT Pro font is a “combo” font, providing access to the Beginner’s Alphabet, Pre-Cursive and Modern Cursive styles all within a single font file without the need to change fonts in the application’s font menu. The font also includes two “speed” versions (Standard and Advanced) of the SA Modern Cursive style, allowing looped letterforms. A stylised and decorative version of SA Cursive GT Pro called SA Copperplate GT Pro is in development and will be available as a separate package (registered users of the Beginner & Cursive packages will be notified when it becomes available). The non-joining versions of the Flourished Capitals from SA Copperplate GT Pro are included in the SA Cursive GT Pro font.
The SA Beginner GT, SA PreCursive GT and SA Cursive GT Pro fonts slope to the right at an angle of 6° to the vertical - see page 23 of Handwriting in the South Australian Curriculum 2nd Edition. The fonts can be slightly skewed in either direction to achieve other slopes if preferred.
The default numbers for the South Australian style are uppercase-height as recommended in Handwriting in the South Australian Curriculum 2nd Edition. In addition to uppercase-height numbers, alternate threequarter-height numbers (and corresponding mathematical symbols) are supplied in all fonts. Note that in the original 1983/1996 syllabus publication, the recommended size for numbers was threequarter-height. A special OpenType feature makes it easy to switch between the two different number sizes.
All fonts can be set to display with or without horizontal guide lines (four lines/three spaces) with no need to change fonts to get the lines – just turn them on or off within your application (for instructions on how to do this see the Quick Start Guide in the manual). If you need to have coloured guidelines see our instruction document Coloured Dotted-Thirds GT_v2.1.pdf
The full multi-lingual character set for the SA Beginner GT-Regular and SA Beginner GT-Thick fonts can be viewed here.
The SA Tight Text GT Pack is a 4-font OpenType family (Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic) in the SA style, optimised for use in text with normal linespacing. The Italics are based on the PreCursive letterforms. The height of the capital letters as well as the length of the ascenders (b, d, f, h, k, l, t) and descenders (f, g, j, p, q, y, z) have all been reduced, making normal linespacing possible. The fonts have similar proportions, size and linespacing to normal text fonts (eg Arial, Helvetica etc) at the same point size. Ideal for school newsletters, pupil's reports, worksheets, forms, websites and documents, allowing them to be written in the same recognisable style that the students are learning to write - but avoiding the very wide linespacing that you would get if you were to use our Beginner teaching fonts. Multi-Language support - contains all special characters required for Australian Aboriginal, NZ Maori, Classical Latin (Phonetic) and many other commonly-taught languages which use the latin alphabet. Enhanced Maths support, with the ability to type "true" fractions automatically. Includes Special custom Keyboard Layout software (Mac & Windows) for use with Australian Aboriginal and Phonetic Latin (Note - Keyboard Layouts for all the other languages are already standard with the Mac and Windows operating systems). Note these fonts don't include horizontal guidelines. Numbers are cap-height by default. Not available as individual fonts. Delivered by download. 10-computer licence. Win/Mac compatible. The SA Tight Text GT fonts are NOT recommended for use by pupils in the very early handwriting teaching stages.
* Download free "Handwriting in the South Australian Curriculum 2nd Edition" (2007) 7MB PDF
Please note that this downloaded material is Copyright SA Dept of Education and Childrens' Services.
