Font Forum

Not sure where else to ask this, so here goes.

When we teach very young kids how to write the lower case A, we get them to write 'a'.

But in almost all computer fonts, when not italicized they appear as 'a'.

This gets very confusing for the children when I print out material for them to read.

So my questions are:

What are the proper names for the two different looking lowercase A's ?

Are there any reasons why most computer fonts use 'a' by default rather than 'a'?

Are there any good fonts that use 'a' by default even when not italicized?

All the 'a' characters came out the same in your post but I assume you mean the single storey 'a' and the two storey 'a'. The handwriting 'a' with a single loop is called the single storey 'a'. The more complex 'a' with a loop at the bottom and a hook over the top is the two storey 'a'.

I have no idea why this came to be.

There are many fonts which use a single storey 'a' in the upright version. One of them is 'Cadman' which is one of my own, you can download it for free if you like it.