Crossed Lowercase q

[Member Rya…]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Anybody ever seen this before, and/or know what face(s) it originates from?

[Member Rya…]

(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)

[Member dez…]

Looks like someone just typed an underscore over the q.

[Member Joh…]

I don't think so, Chris. The bar is too narrow and too carefully balanced on the stem to be an underscore.

[Member Sin…]

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.

[Member cer…]

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.

[Member Rya…]

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?

[Member Jos…]

Cerulean: Or from 9.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_handwriting_variation

[Member Sin…]

Recent example from Norway:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nR1srWAslfo/TwY0p-ET_pI/AAAAAAAACqc/X5Wq7ESGj3...

[Member Pub…]

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.

[Member Jos…]

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...

[Member Joh…]

as a sign of elision

Specifically, an abbreviation for per.

[Member gui…]

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.