Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/04/04/take-this-test-to-see-if-you-c.html
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6 Likes
I got it right but only in the fact that I remember the looptail g based on the fact that it’s backwards than the standard? other? common? g. The serif was a bit of a guess, but I felt it looked right going the same direction as the opening, so I chose that.
ETA: Now, I couldn’t write a looptail G for anything (heck my normal g is barely distinguishable from y. >.>)
8 Likes
I recuse myself do to the entire old typewriter font is tattooed on my right arm.
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ha ha i picked 3 and then started overthinking it and decided on 1 based on the “other” lower case g’s tail direction. duh.
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“The experiments suggest our knowledge of letters can suffer when we don’t write them by hand”
Nobody actually writes like that by hand. You see it in print, though, so I say it has much more to do with reading.
44 Likes
The contention that we lose abilities if we don’t use them regularly is solid, but who the hell actually used a ‘looptail g’ when writing anything by hand, even back when that was still a common thing?
Outside of calligraphers, that is.
Jinx.
27 Likes
There’s all this focus on not knowing how to identify it because people don’t write it, but no one I know actually writes a “g” like that. I thought it was styled that way purely for typographical ease-of-reading.
11 Likes
Goddamn Serifs!
But in all seriousness, I got it right.
4 Likes
Slowly raises hand….
I do, when I write in cursive. Casually. I just like it.
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I was thinking of printing, not cursive; but fair enough.
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You write the “g” as shown in the video? Really?!
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So you don’t use it when you’re not cursing? Weird.
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Whatever.
For every font that uses the aberrant Times ‘g’, there’s a Helvetica/Arial or Cursive/Script style that follows handwriting conventions. The Hopkins test is one of trivial typography, not literacy.
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Fair enough, there are probably a few people who do. I daresay, though, that there are not that many folks with this level of writerly style and panache. A tip of the hat to you, you wonderful hipster. 
For the rest of us, it’s a boring old ‘g’ in our sentences, and may the loops be damned. Tried writing one of those looped ones, and it wasn’t pretty. More power to those of you who can.
1 Like
This one annoys me, I never noticed it. I just hat to check using Times New Roman because I didn’t believe it. I was taught cursive, so thought it would look a bit like that, with the back of the loop on the right.
Does cursive g count as another form of g too? Thinking further about that, we also learnt some elaborate capital letters I can’t remember for the life of me now, but some of them didn’t look much like print ones.
3 Likes
Anybody with a minimal background in graphic design should be ashamed if they got this wrong.
I got it right, even before seeing the options. In my mind I was seeing the lowercase g set in Adobe Caslon Pro, on 16pt stock with slight embossing and a nice UV coating.
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I picked wrong but I feel vindicated because I am superior to that annoying music.
7 Likes
Nailed it. Got it right 
I got it right, but probably because I deal with fonts on a regular basis.
Here is an origin story of the G.
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