In a time of tablets and Tinder most people don’t know what a lowercase ‘G’ looks like, despite seeing it millions of times.Two men end up in court after row about rescuing a duck in McDonald's
A new study has found that a surprising number of adults were unable to pick out a ‘looptail’ G from a line up – with many unaware that the letter’s two printed forms exist at all.
Scientists at John Hopkins University in Baltimore suggested that the phenomenon likely occurs because we are not taught the looptail form at school – despite the letter being used in most novels, magazines and newspapers.
Lead author of the study Professor Michael McCloskey said: ‘We think that if we look at something enough, especially if we have to pay attention to shape as we do during reading, then we would know what it looks like, but our results suggest that’s not always the case.
‘What we think may what be happening here is that we learn the shapes of most letters in part because we have to write them in school.
‘Looptail G is something we’re never taught to write, so we may not learn its shape as well.’Police mocked for e-fit 'which looks like Lego character'
To test people’s awareness of each form of g, the researchers conducted a three-part experiment.
In the first test, they investigated whether people knew there were two lowercase print Gs. The team asked 38 adults to list letters with two lowercase print varieties, with just two naming g and only one writing both forms correctly.
Study co-author Kimberly Wong: ‘We would say: “There are two forms of g. Can you write them?” And people would look at us and just stare for a moment, because they had no idea.
‘Once you really nudged them on, insisting there are two types of g, some would still insist there is no second g.’
In the final experiment, 25 participants took a multiple-choice test where they were asked to pick the looptail G-from a line p of four similar characters. Only seven people picked out the correct answer.Can you identify floaty potato, booplesnoot or fart squirrel in list of renamed animals?
Study co-author Gali Ellenblum said: ‘They don’t entirely know what this letter looks like, even though they can read it. This is not true of letters in general.’
The experiments suggest our knowledge of letters can suffer when we don’t write them by hand. As we write less and become more dependent on electronic devices, this could impact how we learn to read, according to the researchers.
Professor McCloskey said: ‘Our findings give us an intriguing way of looking at questions about the importance of writing for reading.’
Unless you’re a typography nerd or a hand-letter lover, it’s no surprise you struggled to identify it. * The correct answer is top right.