The Victorian fonts are designed in strict accordance with the current Victorian Modern Cursive style as specified in The Teaching of Handwriting Revised Edition * published by the Victorian Department of Education and Training, 2002 (ISBN 0 7594 0240 X). The Victorian Modern Cursive style was originally introduced in the first edition of The Teaching of Handwriting, published in 1985 (ISBN 0 7241 7433 8).
The Victorian Modern Cursive style is the recommended style for Victoria the NT and is also used by some schools in WA.
The unjoined form of the Victorian style is VIC Infant Cursive GT (Appendix A-D, pages 47-50) The closely-related but unjoined, VIC Label Print GT font is based on the “Printing for Labeling” letterforms specified in Appendix G (page 53) of The Teaching of Handwriting Revised Edition. Note that in the Victorian syllabus, the unjoined print font VIC Label Print GT is usually taught after the joined cursive style has been fully mastered – this is the opposite sequence to that used in all other regions.
The weight of the Regular fonts is intended to match the average pen thickness of the illustrations in The Teaching of Handwriting Revised Edition. The Thick weight is approximately 170% of the Regular weight as per common typographic practice.
The VIC Infant Cursive 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 VIC Label Print GT fonts are available as Regular, Thick and OutIined. These 10 fonts plus PDF Manual comprises the Beginner Pack.
When fully joined, Infant Cursive becomes the Modern Cursive style (Appendix E, page 51). The automatically-joining fully cursive font VIC Cursive GT Pro is available as a separate package with its own Manual. The VIC Cursive GT Pro font is supplied in one weight which is slightly thinner than the stand-alone VIC Infant Cursive GT-Regular and VIC Label Print 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 VIC Cursive GT Pro font.
The VIC 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 VIC 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 VIC Cursive GT Pro font is a “combo” font, providing access to the Infant Cursive, Label Print and 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 Cursive style, allowing looped letterforms (Appendix F, page 52). Also included in the font is a set of Flourished Capitals (with alternates) as described in Appendix H of The Teaching of Handwriting Revised Edition (page 54). Also included in the VIC Cursive GT Pro font is the option for VIC Flourished Caps.
The VIC Infant Cursive GT, VIC Label Print GT and VIC Cursive GT Pro fonts slope to the right at an angle of 10° to the vertical and diagonal joins are at 45° as described in the Victorian specifications (page 31). If your application has controls for slanting text, the fonts can be slightly skewed in either direction to achieve other slopes if preferred.
The default numerals for the Victorian style are half-height (ie lowercase height) as recommended in The Teaching of Handwriting Revised Edition. In addition to half-height numbers, alternate full-height numbers and corresponding mathematical symbols are supplied in all the fonts. A special OpenType feature makes it easy to switch between the two different number styles.
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 VIC Infant Cursive GT-Regular and VIC Infant Cursive GT-Thick fonts can be viewed here.
The VIC Tight Text GT Pack is a 4-font OpenType family (Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic) in the VIC 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 VIC Tight Text GT fonts are NOT recommended for use by pupils in the very early handwriting teaching stages.
* Download free PDF extracts (total 7MB) from "The Teaching of Handwriting Revised Edition" from the
Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development website:
Please note that this downloaded material is Copyright Victorian Dept of Education and Early Childhood Development.
