Useful Fonts

You know there are other fonts you can use than Comic Sans, and Arial, and don't even mention Times Roman.

On every Mac there are some great alternatives, like the Avenir or Myriad Pro collections, but for a font that forms the a and the g properly, it's hard to beat Sassoon, the cursive font used by the PenPals scheme, the link to download this is below:

Sassoon PenPal Cursive Font

  • Download and install the Sassoon set of fonts, using this link. Double click on each one to install it.

There is also a Sassoon font that is dotted, you should know that Sassoon have ceased to support this font, as they do not feel is it helpful in teaching children to form their letters properly, instead they advise teachers to use the 'Sassoon PenPals Tracker' font, which they believe is more pedagogically appropriate. If you really want to use the dotted font you can download and install it from here.

Google Docs Equivalents

In Google Docs, in addition to the default set of fonts you can add to the collection from a vast range, just go to 'More Fonts' at the bottom of the Fonts menu, but don't go nuts, the more you add, the more work Google Docs has to do, I'd go with 5 or so, some worth looking at are Proxima, Cabin, Raleway, and for a more informal look, Architects Daughter, and Waiting for Sunrise, both use a 'normal' a and g, but look way nicer than Comic Sans.

One of our East Campus DLCs has written this blog post on useful alternatives to the awful Comic Sans font here.

Sassoon in MS Word

Using Sassoon in MS Word is a little tricky, but it works:

How to activate the Sassoon Joiner font in MS Word - it may be a little different on a PC, but it will be similar ...

Select the text > Format > Font

(or control/right click on the text & Choose Font)

> and then the Advanced Tab

Tick Use contextual alternatives, and choose stylistic set 1.

Dyslexia Fonts

There are some pernicious myths around the kinds of fonts that people with dyslexia find easier to read, but one of them is not Comic Sans, in fact more likely candidates according to the researchers are: Helvetica, Courier, Arial, and Verdana.

You can read about this here if you're interested, but in summary, why would you make do with a font with questionable support when the Dyslexia Association have designed a font, specially for dyslexics that you can download and use for free?

UWCSEA Font

The 'official' font used by the college in their promotional material is Bliss

*Apple may complain when you try to install it, as it's not one of 'theirs' but just tick the box and install it anyway. Trust me ;o)