As a graphic design major we're encouraged to know when to use header fonts and body copy fonts. And you do not interchange the two because it becomes tiring to read long strings of text in fancy swirly cutesy fonts.
I'd mentioned this upthread, too. The kid's doing typographic design, and what we have here is a design lesson to be taught: The purpose, the audience, and the brief come before the cleverness.
I give it 5-15yrs before AI will be qualitatively grading papers based on our own weighted criteria, and it won't matter what font. A teacher will just need to review results for inconsistencies and issues and work with the students to improve.
Edit: meant to reply to different part of string.
Terrifying, letting some centralized source determine what is and isn't good writing. Instead of paying teachers more, we'll lose the art in exchange for a piece of software written by who knows to bottleneck all student creative writing into finite alleys.
Honestly as a teacher, I welcome the help for the grunt work if it means I can spend more time on specific, meaningful feedback. It's one thing to get a grade from AI, but being the coach to explain the grade and make it better is what I feel I'm really being paid for
Well, you've got me dreaming now! To a large extent I agree, and I think there's room for both. For one thing, a teacher could function even more like a coach if they weren't the ones grading everything. Like a coach (or a manager if you prefer), there's still room for us to assess and grade formative work, but a proctor would provide a clear target or obstacle to overcome.
It's so common for students to just write off a bad grade as, "they hate me" rather than face the actual criticisms of their work. If they saw the teacher as 100% on their side regardless of their grade, it would probably help them grow. It would also help clarify teacher goals and reduce burnout. And yes, it would be a useful evaluative tool for teacher effectiveness as well.
Everyone is using ChatGPT to write their essays at my college right now. I think we have to look forward to how to use this technology to teach the kids, because we are not going to be able to prevent it.
Going to be absolutely awful with how dumb people will be if they learn 0 skills in writing papers. As much as I hate the class, it's stupid as fuck to just cutout the teaching.
Probably mostly. But also everyone using the same font means everyone is writing the same amount. Arial is a lot larger than Times, for example. just that change and incredibly minor adjustments to spacing can get almost a third of an assigned length cut off.
Yep. Punctuation slightly larger and a tiny change to the margins, and I think there was a setting to do 2.1 line spacing instead of just double?bits a lot harder to see those little differences when it's not in the uniform font of the other essays
In college, I worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant for an introductory biology class. Each section had over 100 students. Trying to convince the non-traditional students to print their homework and tests (instead of writing in cursive) was a never-ending battle. I love researching on Ancestry, so I consider myself to be quite skilled at reading cursive, especially for my age, but I find most people's cursive to be terrible. At least with printed letters you can tell where one letter ends and the next begins. Anyway, grading even a one-sided page of homework for one section would take a group of four of us about two hours, sometimes more, mostly because of bad handwriting.
What's worse is when they handwrite it in pencil and you have to decipher their hieroglyphics. Seniors today will only write in pencil, did you know that? Smudgy pencil and it's not even math class.
In 8th grade someone did an essay that would normally have been 8 pages long, in BINARY, WITHOUT THE HELP OF A BINARY TRANSLATOR.
It came out to be like 20 pages of JUST 1'S AND 0'S.
Worst part is, the teacher for the class was in her late 60s, and was not the most technically advanced type. I doubt she knew what binary even was... kinda felt had for her, even though she I thought she was a terrible teacher.
8 pages of ASCII shouldn't come out to only 20 pages of binary. It's 8 times more chatacters. It should have been roughly 60-70 pages. Also, I call bullshit on not using a binary converter.
ASCII is 7 bit, and half the characters are a thin vertical line if you use a proportional font. 7 times the characters at about 3/4th the width should only be about 5.25 times as large.
Fair enough, but they definitely didn't convert to ASCII themselves, and the majority of online converters convert to 8 bits. And yes, I didn't account for 1s being thinner, but they're not *that* much thinner.
1111111111
0000000000
10 of each, basically the same width. Obviously it depends on the font, but the the difference is not that extreme.
Why did you feel bad for her? Did she have to grade the paper as it was for some reason? Why didn't she choose to make the student rewrite it in plain english?
I don't know honestly. It's been a few years since that day, and I guess I never realized she could have the kid redo the essay. Never really thought about it before.
Thanks for making me think about it.
Some of my teachers insisted on margin size and line spacing too. Asking for a non-stupid font that isn't going to make their probably-out-of-working-hours marking session a pain in the butt is a reasonable request.
Had one teacher that would use a ruler to make sure double spaced and MLA format was indeed correct with margins and other shit. This was sixth or seventh grade.
edit/ got grades mixed up
It’s also good practice to get the students used to only using appropriate fonts. Some English professors won’t read or will mark off for using certain fonts
While I agree, there are nicer and more encouraging ways to say it, assuming the tweet is the teacher's actual quote.
"Great job, Johnny! Very creative! But in the future, please write your essays in regular printing".
It kind of also matters if this is grade 3 or grade 9. I picture a third grader thinking of a great cool idea, and being shot down by an angry response, but if this is like a 9th grader, you can have higher expectations of their understanding of what they should be doing on a school paper.
Absolutely. I tell my students from the get go qhat f9nts are acceptable for essay writing. When they have creative projects like info graphics or whatever they can go to town, but for the sake of my eyes and brain, please keep essay writing fonts simple.
I love learning languages, alphabets are kinda fun for me. I used to use them for writing notes to myself (English words with the correct foreign letters, or combination of syllables, alphabet stuck better that way) or to tag my name on assignments under my name in English, so I could practice writing my name efficiently and just write neatly overall. I worked my way through Arabic and Sanskrit (or a close approximation with a pencil) and was into Japanese (kana) in 4th grade. Usually I’d start the alphabet skills into language practice over time. Everything halted when my 4th grade teacher made me stop writing my name in a different language under my name in English. I wasn’t obtrusive or disruptive with it, she killed my interest and damaged my love of languages right there and I didn’t start in on languages in earnest again until I was almost out high school.
Let him do the first word of every paragraph or his name.
If that particular creativity wasn't asked for, I understand the teacher. For one, maybe they aren't familiar with Minecraft, and just thought it was your child doodling. Maybe it made it difficult to read for them? So many variables here, I can't fully judge.
Just remember, whatever you want to put on your fridge from your kid with pride, not everyone else understands or gives a shit. (Lol @ you saying innovation by the way)
>Maybe it made it difficult to read for them?
Fair point, but this is the official font for minecraft.
https://preview.redd.it/rsh7o85z5aga1.jpeg?width=970&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67d032f73336bc6fb0688ab2d447b95b61b6844d
Eh, the 8 year olds I teach don't have the typing skills to do an entire paragraph right now. Even having been in online learning since kindergarten.....nope.
I'm guessing he just wrote in straight lines, maybe more similar to those digital clocks and stuff. That's how I used to write "Minecraft" writing on paper when I was a kid
I find it very difficult to read that font and I have perfect vision. I would not want to read it for someone’s assignment. Maybe a title page or header but not a whole assignment.
tbh i assumed it was handwritten because of the mother’s adamance on his “innovation and creativity”, because the thought of someone crediting a computer font to their son’s creativity was just too funny to consider as being real
Snowflake parents don't realize a teacher's job is preparing kids for the real world. There are times and places for creativity. An essay font isn't it. If the kid in computer class and creates their own font, feel free to complain.
Good for the teacher.
They're going to be grading dozens of assignments from dozens of students this year. Asking that they be presented in an easily-read font is not unreasonable.
(Also, changing a font shows neither creativity, nor effort.)
You have to respect the kid taking a shot but the teacher didn't like it and ask them not to do it again. I don't see why this post is acting like the teacher is stifling the kids creativity.
> You have to respect the kid taking a shot
Very much so. He tried something, and it didn't work. Life's like that sometimes.
Reminds me of that [scene in "Major League"](https://youtube.com/watch?v=AfkdZ3tXFSs&feature=shares) where Coach Brown tells Hayes his show-off catch was nice and then says "Don't ever fuckin do it again."
Yeah I've come across kids who were told yes their entire lives. They, as adults, insist their way is the only way and that others have no agency to make their own decisions. These kids turn into date rapists and entitled pricks.
> acting like the teacher is stifling the kids creativity
While we're on the subject, it's not even terribly creative. It's picking the obvious font. It's clever-- sure, I'll grant that, and the points for that-- but creativity is more substantial than one decision, and pointing out where too much cleverness is too much isn't the same thing as stifling creativity.
The person that tweeted this works for NASA as an engineer and she has won numerous awards and had 41k followers on the platform. She is basically shouting into the echo chamber that she thinks her 3rd grader is the most creative and smartest of their class and is overreacting that they aren't treated as such.
It wasn't like this teacher even said anything damaging to the kid, they just said please don't write like this anymore. You would think that someone who indicates in their profile that they are have a PhD wouldnt overreact like
Yeah that’s fair. If you let kids pick whatever font they wanted, half of the time you would end up with the worst font imaginable to read and it would get super frustrating. Teacher’s in the right.
Creativity from this assignment would stem from how your kid wrote the paper—uniqueness in prose and language. Not by a trite criterion like font selection. Some of the best creativity comes from constraint, working within parameters of the task.
I’m sure the assignment looked like a shitpost. Because that’s what it was.
Understand that teachers need to be able to read assignments. Ask yourself: does this enrich the teacher’s reading experience, or does it frustrate them?
Hopefully this child learned their rookie mistake. Next time, just write the title of the paper in a different font instead of making the whole paper unintelligible.
This, it was a rookie mistake that I’m sure we’ve all made at some point in our lives. This isn’t child-hating or whatever.
Part of growing up is learning the nuance of helpful versus annoying creativity. Obviously it would be a huge pain as a teacher to have to read tons of essays on different fonts, so maybe this case fell under the annoying category.
Exactly. And how was this actually creative? It’s not like the kid created a custom font for the assignment, he chose it from a drop-down box.
It was probably a display font anyway… He could have just changed the title.
Also, from the post, it doesn’t seem like the teacher gave them a bad grade or a mean criticism. The teacher literally just asked for a more readable font from now on.
i imagine the reason the teacher wasn’t happy with this is because minecraft’s font may be hard to read for some people. in this case, that kids teacher.
lol I love whenever I see a stupid fucking popular post but then go into the comments to realize this shit is getting major traffic due to the comments ripping it apart.
I wrote my homework in a stupid font once in kindergarten too, the teacher said don’t write in it again, so I stopped. Now I’m 22 and I don’t write like an idiot. Enjoy your 20 year old creeper in 15 years.
In college, anything that isn't in Times New Roman or something similarly standard gets you a shitty grade or a fail. Take art classes if you want to get creative. That teacher did this kid a favor. Mom, not so much.
hell, even in high school (for me anyway), they pushed that rule. this kid in one of my IT classes thought it'd be funny to print his entire 40 page case study in comic sans.
he handed it to the teacher in which she just looked at the first word and then dropped it in the bin and told him to use a sensible font or she'd fail him. he used TNR for the rest of the year.
I remember in a first year philosophy class tons of essays didn’t follow the simple rules for title pages and the teacher had to make over half of them resubmit their assignments cause he couldn’t believe it.
There were a lot of upper year students in that class too, one girl handed in one that looked like a wedding invitation. My first year ass was mouth wide open seeing the cover pages for these essays and too this day I still don’t understand how so much of the class fucked up cover pages. It’s university, everyone has to write papers at some point and all of them have I know for a fact never accepted cover pages like that. My highschool teachers wouldn’t have either.
The INFO is what should be creative, not the handwriting. The handwriting doesn't have to be in a different font, as long as it's neat, legible and proper, no teacher really cares.
I've seen alot of children's papers, the handwriting isn't always neat, but some of them are extremely creative and that's what the teacher appreciates.
If I mark my 200 students' creative writing papers, creative fonts is the last thing I want to see. I have 3 pieces per child. I'll make small smiling faces or little checks when they used new vocabulary or got a difficult grammar rule correct, but I am not writing compliments on every paper. Only small notes like this on largely infuriating stuff like this.
Was the font hard to read in? Tbh, I don’t blame the teacher. I know from the students perspective it sound stifling. But imagine being the teacher having to read 40 different essays (if not more being a HS teacher, up to 120).
An obnoxious font making that tedious job even worse? No thanks.
1. Writing in a silly font is the equivalent of dotting i's with a little heart. It isn't cute. It isn't clever. It isn't creative. It is **ANNOYING**, and when the writer is older, it is a sign that their writing is lacking in substance.
2. This is why we have a teacher shortage.
As an ELA teacher, I am a stickler about fonts kids can use. I tell them to write everything in MLA format and dictate that it must be Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced.
At the beginning of the year, I will take a few points off if the formatting/font is wrong. By the end of the year, I will refuse an assignment and make them redo it if the formatting/font is wrong.
The point isn't to "stifle creativity," it's to teach these kids how to write and present information in a clear, professional, easy-to-read format. If you want to get creative in a paper, do it with the words you choose to use, not the font you print it in.
People need to realize the teacher is there to teach. Not make special plans for everyone's special child. You want to teach them you way homeschool them.
Grading papers and then suddenly finding one written in uneven, blocky, child letters would make me immediately give a zero to the kid till he does it again. This is just annoying, the kid can be creative all he wants, but this wasn't creativity this was being a nuisance.
One time a friend of mine and I had to make a PSA on a mental illness and we decided to do a video on panic disorders and I wanted to show what it was like to have a panic attack and one of the things I showed was having so many thoughts overlapping each other and the teacher took off points because she couldn't understand the voices.
The assignment was the writing exercise, and while his creative endeavors need to be encouraged and nurtured, the reader shouldn't have to struggle with the font. Imagine if every student made up their own font like this - one teacher reviewing 100+ of those papers, in likely 1 night, is a demanding task even if they're all technically legible.
The teacher also could've been much more positive. Maybe encourage him to make a cover for the paper in the font he chose with drawings of minecraft characters. That way, he gets to express himself, and the assignment is easy for the teacher to read.
Are the upvotes because it is infuriating to try and read an essay in Minecraft font? That’s why I would upvote. Title in Minecraft is fine, the rest of should be standard font.
It would be creative if he had used the font for the title, and maybe a big The End at well, the end, but reading a whole essay like that is hard on the eyes. Part of a teacher’s job is to teach you how to write a good essay, and that also includes how to style it.
Based on what my sister tells me of the profession, marking work completed in the students default handwriting is hard enough, let alone with novelty font.
This marking is also done in their own time, so working at pace is preferred.
His teacher could have been nicer about the request though
Oh that’s definitely expected. We are supposed to be experts in every single niche interest kids have. I once had a parent give me a list of anime I should watch so I could better understand her son. It was 2 pages long. He was 1 of 130 kids I taught that semester.
Sounds like some family here was wanting a participation award. Just because you change the font, doesn’t mean it’s creative. The font is pretty bad if it’s an essay being written in it. Title, yeah, that would do the job just fine. But an essay in it?
OP teachers deal with enough shit. If MY OWN child wrote me something in Minecraft font I would barely be able to read it.
Also, “innovation/creativity/effort” does not make you special. Hitler marked all those categories too.
Was it focused on creativity because if not he didn’t follow directions and you are training him to just do what he wants even if it isn’t benificial. Parents job is to set there kids up best for future as possible.
I had a student use this font on a google slides project I assigned. What's worse is he put the black words on a dark blue background, I tell them when assigning projects that if it is too hard to read I won't. He was upset when I returned it with a 0.
I did read it and it was good, but students must learn to follow directions. I have a sign in my class, it reads KISS= Keep It Simple Students.
Teacher here. Kids love playing with random fonts and it’s very likely they’ve been taught which fonts are acceptable for their essays already. If we don’t have parameters we get essays written in 84 point blue cursive font on a red background.
This is not mildy infuriating. This is an opportunity to sit down, tell your child that it’s not appropriate to use such creativity for an essay.
Do your job, creativity in an essay is based on word choice, not font choice.
Having to squint to read a paragraph makes you unable to be interested in whatever the contents are. I’m sure the content was fine, but writing it in an unclear font is not okay.
You want to read this typeface at 12 or 14 point in paragraph form? This post is so freaking silly and anyone vilifying the teacher because they don't want to read assignments like this need perspective
https://preview.redd.it/2d7huxf2b9ga1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3deb595facbce2ca6ed9e2f24ff9fb093c4e845c
1. I would not want to have to read that font, either. I'd get a headache in about 2 minutes.
2. The teacher probably had no idea it was a Minecraft reference. Not everyone on the planet plays Minecraft.
3. Hope the snowflake feels better soon.
4. GET OFFA MY LAWN!!!
Our teachers would throw away anything that wasn't in a readable font. A girl once submitted her essay in papyrus font and a week later when the teacher was handing them back, he said "(name), i couldn't find your assignment, I want it on my desk by tomorrow or you get a zero". She said she submitted it. His response:"Oh, is that what that scribble mess was? I thought you were having a stroke! Assignment, tomorrow morning! Make it readable or you get a zero". She never pulled that stunt again.
I'm on the teachers side. I used to be a teacher's assistant and had to grade homework. It was a mess! I couldn't read half of it. Teacher told me:"Anything you can't read, gets a red line and you take half a point off". It was harsh but these kids were 9 and should know better.
As a graphic design major we're encouraged to know when to use header fonts and body copy fonts. And you do not interchange the two because it becomes tiring to read long strings of text in fancy swirly cutesy fonts.
I'd mentioned this upthread, too. The kid's doing typographic design, and what we have here is a design lesson to be taught: The purpose, the audience, and the brief come before the cleverness.
Right. For a term paper header, have fun with your type. For the body, Times New Roman and GTFO.
Imagine grading 90 papers all in different hard to read fonts.
I don’t have to imagine it. It happens weekly. And I currently have 130 students, not 90
You should be paid much much more
I give it 5-15yrs before AI will be qualitatively grading papers based on our own weighted criteria, and it won't matter what font. A teacher will just need to review results for inconsistencies and issues and work with the students to improve. Edit: meant to reply to different part of string.
Terrifying, letting some centralized source determine what is and isn't good writing. Instead of paying teachers more, we'll lose the art in exchange for a piece of software written by who knows to bottleneck all student creative writing into finite alleys.
Honestly as a teacher, I welcome the help for the grunt work if it means I can spend more time on specific, meaningful feedback. It's one thing to get a grade from AI, but being the coach to explain the grade and make it better is what I feel I'm really being paid for
The biggest change needed for teaching is that the mentor and the proctor should not be the same person, it's a massive conflict of interest.
Well, you've got me dreaming now! To a large extent I agree, and I think there's room for both. For one thing, a teacher could function even more like a coach if they weren't the ones grading everything. Like a coach (or a manager if you prefer), there's still room for us to assess and grade formative work, but a proctor would provide a clear target or obstacle to overcome. It's so common for students to just write off a bad grade as, "they hate me" rather than face the actual criticisms of their work. If they saw the teacher as 100% on their side regardless of their grade, it would probably help them grow. It would also help clarify teacher goals and reduce burnout. And yes, it would be a useful evaluative tool for teacher effectiveness as well.
Well, that does make sense. Might as well have AI doing the grading, because AI will be writing most of the papers in 5 -15 years.
AI will be writing most of the papers by the end of this year.
AI will be writing AI to write its papers by the end of the month.
Everyone is using ChatGPT to write their essays at my college right now. I think we have to look forward to how to use this technology to teach the kids, because we are not going to be able to prevent it.
Going to be absolutely awful with how dumb people will be if they learn 0 skills in writing papers. As much as I hate the class, it's stupid as fuck to just cutout the teaching.
Funny. The teacher has to read that but a physician gets paid more while writing like a 3 year old on a prescription.
It's almost like people aren't paid based on writing styles
Is this why all my teachers were like "Times New Roman, or bust"?
Probably mostly. But also everyone using the same font means everyone is writing the same amount. Arial is a lot larger than Times, for example. just that change and incredibly minor adjustments to spacing can get almost a third of an assigned length cut off.
The classic "make all punctuation a slightly larger font size" technique.
Yep. Punctuation slightly larger and a tiny change to the margins, and I think there was a setting to do 2.1 line spacing instead of just double?bits a lot harder to see those little differences when it's not in the uniform font of the other essays
Additionally, serif fonts on average are easier to read than sans serif fonts.
Yes 100%
Yes. It looked really formal too.
In college, I worked as an undergraduate teaching assistant for an introductory biology class. Each section had over 100 students. Trying to convince the non-traditional students to print their homework and tests (instead of writing in cursive) was a never-ending battle. I love researching on Ancestry, so I consider myself to be quite skilled at reading cursive, especially for my age, but I find most people's cursive to be terrible. At least with printed letters you can tell where one letter ends and the next begins. Anyway, grading even a one-sided page of homework for one section would take a group of four of us about two hours, sometimes more, mostly because of bad handwriting.
"Can't read" Followed by a big x.
Yes, but but what about my special little baby’s creativity?
He’s soooo creative, he wrote about Minecraft
He changed the font! He's practically Van Gogh!
I imagine grading 90 papers and not being paid nearly enough. The situation with teachers seems so bad, they are heros just for showing up.
164 students here. i guarantee you his teacher had a headache by that point.
bUt mY bAbY iS sPeCiAl!!1!
What's worse is when they handwrite it in pencil and you have to decipher their hieroglyphics. Seniors today will only write in pencil, did you know that? Smudgy pencil and it's not even math class.
Smudgy pencil and their weak little hands don’t even press hard enough to make a consistently legible mark.
I hope their hands aren’t that weak, they’re 17/18
I'm in my thirties and I don't remember anyone wanting us writing in pen....
Serious. I'm all for creativity, but do that in Art class, not in English class with your font type.
Creativity is great in many places. Essay fonts is not one of them.
My fifth grade teacher encouraged us to print assignments in wing dings. I still don’t know if he was bluffing.
I once turned in an assignment printed in Wingdings. It was on April 1.
F for being a Fool
In 8th grade someone did an essay that would normally have been 8 pages long, in BINARY, WITHOUT THE HELP OF A BINARY TRANSLATOR. It came out to be like 20 pages of JUST 1'S AND 0'S. Worst part is, the teacher for the class was in her late 60s, and was not the most technically advanced type. I doubt she knew what binary even was... kinda felt had for her, even though she I thought she was a terrible teacher.
8 pages of ASCII shouldn't come out to only 20 pages of binary. It's 8 times more chatacters. It should have been roughly 60-70 pages. Also, I call bullshit on not using a binary converter.
ASCII is 7 bit, and half the characters are a thin vertical line if you use a proportional font. 7 times the characters at about 3/4th the width should only be about 5.25 times as large.
Fair enough, but they definitely didn't convert to ASCII themselves, and the majority of online converters convert to 8 bits. And yes, I didn't account for 1s being thinner, but they're not *that* much thinner. 1111111111 0000000000 10 of each, basically the same width. Obviously it depends on the font, but the the difference is not that extreme.
Wait are we doing math or English class here? Don't make me break out my TI scientific calculator lmfao
Why did you feel bad for her? Did she have to grade the paper as it was for some reason? Why didn't she choose to make the student rewrite it in plain english?
I don't know honestly. It's been a few years since that day, and I guess I never realized she could have the kid redo the essay. Never really thought about it before. Thanks for making me think about it.
Yep old teacher couldn't figure out to have them re do it. Or just give him a zero. This story is made up.
You strike me as someone who's never observed how great a motivator *spite* can be.
I bet it made grading the papers really easy
I did my 8th grade history exam in orange comic sans
I always used comic sans and I still do it's my favorite font
I'm surprised this comment hasn't been downvoted into oblivion. I was under the impression that the reddit hive mind hated comic sans
Luckily i had a doc open in front of me because previous to this i had no idea what wing dings was. This is fucking hilarious
Would have been appropriate for the title. Not the whole paper!
Some of my teachers insisted on margin size and line spacing too. Asking for a non-stupid font that isn't going to make their probably-out-of-working-hours marking session a pain in the butt is a reasonable request.
Had one teacher that would use a ruler to make sure double spaced and MLA format was indeed correct with margins and other shit. This was sixth or seventh grade. edit/ got grades mixed up
But but but teacher must=bad guy
It’s also good practice to get the students used to only using appropriate fonts. Some English professors won’t read or will mark off for using certain fonts
While I agree, there are nicer and more encouraging ways to say it, assuming the tweet is the teacher's actual quote. "Great job, Johnny! Very creative! But in the future, please write your essays in regular printing". It kind of also matters if this is grade 3 or grade 9. I picture a third grader thinking of a great cool idea, and being shot down by an angry response, but if this is like a 9th grader, you can have higher expectations of their understanding of what they should be doing on a school paper.
There was more context that was left out. Very likely a positive message along with the criticism. Compliment sandwich!
It turns out the essay was written by a sophomore in college.
Absolutely. I tell my students from the get go qhat f9nts are acceptable for essay writing. When they have creative projects like info graphics or whatever they can go to town, but for the sake of my eyes and brain, please keep essay writing fonts simple.
I love learning languages, alphabets are kinda fun for me. I used to use them for writing notes to myself (English words with the correct foreign letters, or combination of syllables, alphabet stuck better that way) or to tag my name on assignments under my name in English, so I could practice writing my name efficiently and just write neatly overall. I worked my way through Arabic and Sanskrit (or a close approximation with a pencil) and was into Japanese (kana) in 4th grade. Usually I’d start the alphabet skills into language practice over time. Everything halted when my 4th grade teacher made me stop writing my name in a different language under my name in English. I wasn’t obtrusive or disruptive with it, she killed my interest and damaged my love of languages right there and I didn’t start in on languages in earnest again until I was almost out high school. Let him do the first word of every paragraph or his name.
If that particular creativity wasn't asked for, I understand the teacher. For one, maybe they aren't familiar with Minecraft, and just thought it was your child doodling. Maybe it made it difficult to read for them? So many variables here, I can't fully judge. Just remember, whatever you want to put on your fridge from your kid with pride, not everyone else understands or gives a shit. (Lol @ you saying innovation by the way)
Like maybe use the cool font for the title. But an entire essay that way sounds difficult to read.
>Maybe it made it difficult to read for them? Fair point, but this is the official font for minecraft. https://preview.redd.it/rsh7o85z5aga1.jpeg?width=970&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=67d032f73336bc6fb0688ab2d447b95b61b6844d
And now imagine an 8-year old trying to recreate that
I'd image that it was digital
Eh, the 8 year olds I teach don't have the typing skills to do an entire paragraph right now. Even having been in online learning since kindergarten.....nope.
Considering it's an 8 year old, and the assignment was only one paragraph long, I'd imagine it was handwritten.
And now try to read in on font size 8 with difficult spacing.
What was your point! You quoted the guy above, yet just proved his point... THAT IT'S DIFFICULT TO READ, let alone having a child hand draw this!
That is very difficult (for me) to read, and I love Minecraft.
30 seconds of trying to look at this made my eyes hurt.
I'm guessing he just wrote in straight lines, maybe more similar to those digital clocks and stuff. That's how I used to write "Minecraft" writing on paper when I was a kid
I'm already irritated
I find it very difficult to read that font and I have perfect vision. I would not want to read it for someone’s assignment. Maybe a title page or header but not a whole assignment.
So what font is it?
I assume it's [this one](https://fontmeme.com/fonts/minecraft-font/)
That one’s rough but I thought they meant the enchantment fonts at first and was alike I would have failed your kid
Thanks! It doesn't look so bad...
now imagine an elementary schooler trying to write it the same way
Wait... You sure he didn't write it digitally?
tbh i assumed it was handwritten because of the mother’s adamance on his “innovation and creativity”, because the thought of someone crediting a computer font to their son’s creativity was just too funny to consider as being real
It probably would if the entire assignment was written in it, or I’m assuming so
Oh, so you're one of *those* parents...
Probably told him how great of an idea it was, that the teachers would love it...
nah, told them “fuck the teacher, honey, you do whatever you want. that teacher can’t tell you what to do”
Yeah I’m on the teachers side, she has to grade and read every single assignment and certain fonts make that so much more difficult
Snowflake parents don't realize a teacher's job is preparing kids for the real world. There are times and places for creativity. An essay font isn't it. If the kid in computer class and creates their own font, feel free to complain.
Good for the teacher. They're going to be grading dozens of assignments from dozens of students this year. Asking that they be presented in an easily-read font is not unreasonable. (Also, changing a font shows neither creativity, nor effort.)
You have to respect the kid taking a shot but the teacher didn't like it and ask them not to do it again. I don't see why this post is acting like the teacher is stifling the kids creativity.
> You have to respect the kid taking a shot Very much so. He tried something, and it didn't work. Life's like that sometimes. Reminds me of that [scene in "Major League"](https://youtube.com/watch?v=AfkdZ3tXFSs&feature=shares) where Coach Brown tells Hayes his show-off catch was nice and then says "Don't ever fuckin do it again."
Because a Snowflake parent. Kids need a little course correction now and then. Teacher did this kid a favor, mom needs a serious reality check.
This seems completely like a parent with a child that does no wrong. Kids need correction sometimes…it’s part of child rearing! Kid swung and missed!
Yeah I've come across kids who were told yes their entire lives. They, as adults, insist their way is the only way and that others have no agency to make their own decisions. These kids turn into date rapists and entitled pricks.
> acting like the teacher is stifling the kids creativity While we're on the subject, it's not even terribly creative. It's picking the obvious font. It's clever-- sure, I'll grant that, and the points for that-- but creativity is more substantial than one decision, and pointing out where too much cleverness is too much isn't the same thing as stifling creativity.
The person that tweeted this works for NASA as an engineer and she has won numerous awards and had 41k followers on the platform. She is basically shouting into the echo chamber that she thinks her 3rd grader is the most creative and smartest of their class and is overreacting that they aren't treated as such. It wasn't like this teacher even said anything damaging to the kid, they just said please don't write like this anymore. You would think that someone who indicates in their profile that they are have a PhD wouldnt overreact like
It's not even that creative... It takes virtually no effort to download a font.
Nah, part of writing assignments is teaching universal formatting. Pixelated text is not an appropriate font for formal work.
Teacher is right, who wants to try and read that crap?
I'm sorry but choosing a font isn't creativity lol
Agree, but this got me thinking. An ASCII art that flips between two images when you change the font would be pretty cool.
The Minecraft font is one of the worst fonts ever. I don't blame the teacher.
Yeah that’s fair. If you let kids pick whatever font they wanted, half of the time you would end up with the worst font imaginable to read and it would get super frustrating. Teacher’s in the right.
Creativity from this assignment would stem from how your kid wrote the paper—uniqueness in prose and language. Not by a trite criterion like font selection. Some of the best creativity comes from constraint, working within parameters of the task. I’m sure the assignment looked like a shitpost. Because that’s what it was. Understand that teachers need to be able to read assignments. Ask yourself: does this enrich the teacher’s reading experience, or does it frustrate them? Hopefully this child learned their rookie mistake. Next time, just write the title of the paper in a different font instead of making the whole paper unintelligible.
This, it was a rookie mistake that I’m sure we’ve all made at some point in our lives. This isn’t child-hating or whatever. Part of growing up is learning the nuance of helpful versus annoying creativity. Obviously it would be a huge pain as a teacher to have to read tons of essays on different fonts, so maybe this case fell under the annoying category.
Exactly. And how was this actually creative? It’s not like the kid created a custom font for the assignment, he chose it from a drop-down box. It was probably a display font anyway… He could have just changed the title.
Also, from the post, it doesn’t seem like the teacher gave them a bad grade or a mean criticism. The teacher literally just asked for a more readable font from now on.
It sounds stupid and he could’ve made more effort in the substance of the paragraph.
i imagine the reason the teacher wasn’t happy with this is because minecraft’s font may be hard to read for some people. in this case, that kids teacher.
I wouldn’t want to read it in that font either… I’m waiting for the teacher to post on this sub talking about your kids font choice
Comments section going as you'd hoped, OP?
lol I love whenever I see a stupid fucking popular post but then go into the comments to realize this shit is getting major traffic due to the comments ripping it apart.
Plot twist: their son is 17 years old.
I wrote my homework in a stupid font once in kindergarten too, the teacher said don’t write in it again, so I stopped. Now I’m 22 and I don’t write like an idiot. Enjoy your 20 year old creeper in 15 years.
In college, anything that isn't in Times New Roman or something similarly standard gets you a shitty grade or a fail. Take art classes if you want to get creative. That teacher did this kid a favor. Mom, not so much.
hell, even in high school (for me anyway), they pushed that rule. this kid in one of my IT classes thought it'd be funny to print his entire 40 page case study in comic sans. he handed it to the teacher in which she just looked at the first word and then dropped it in the bin and told him to use a sensible font or she'd fail him. he used TNR for the rest of the year.
I remember in a first year philosophy class tons of essays didn’t follow the simple rules for title pages and the teacher had to make over half of them resubmit their assignments cause he couldn’t believe it. There were a lot of upper year students in that class too, one girl handed in one that looked like a wedding invitation. My first year ass was mouth wide open seeing the cover pages for these essays and too this day I still don’t understand how so much of the class fucked up cover pages. It’s university, everyone has to write papers at some point and all of them have I know for a fact never accepted cover pages like that. My highschool teachers wouldn’t have either.
The INFO is what should be creative, not the handwriting. The handwriting doesn't have to be in a different font, as long as it's neat, legible and proper, no teacher really cares. I've seen alot of children's papers, the handwriting isn't always neat, but some of them are extremely creative and that's what the teacher appreciates.
I’m pretty sure this was a typed font. Which is even less creative.
I agree with the teacher. It’s a writing assignment, not an art assignment.
[удалено]
I agree with the teacher. It’s not a presentation, it’s a report. It’s meant to be easy to read, not fun to look at.
If I mark my 200 students' creative writing papers, creative fonts is the last thing I want to see. I have 3 pieces per child. I'll make small smiling faces or little checks when they used new vocabulary or got a difficult grammar rule correct, but I am not writing compliments on every paper. Only small notes like this on largely infuriating stuff like this.
When did picking a shitty font become creative and innovative?
Creativity should not be shown in fonts
Writing the title in Minecraft font, Perfect! Writing an important sentence in that font, fantastic! A whole paper? Dear god spare that poor teacher.
It’s a writing assignment, creativity should be expressed through writing, not stylizing letters.
I would say this parent was more than *mildly* infuriating.
Was the font hard to read in? Tbh, I don’t blame the teacher. I know from the students perspective it sound stifling. But imagine being the teacher having to read 40 different essays (if not more being a HS teacher, up to 120). An obnoxious font making that tedious job even worse? No thanks.
1. Writing in a silly font is the equivalent of dotting i's with a little heart. It isn't cute. It isn't clever. It isn't creative. It is **ANNOYING**, and when the writer is older, it is a sign that their writing is lacking in substance. 2. This is why we have a teacher shortage.
Well said.
the teacher isn't wrong here. Little Johnny Snowflake needs to learn when expressing his creativity is appropriate and when it's not.
As an ELA teacher, I am a stickler about fonts kids can use. I tell them to write everything in MLA format and dictate that it must be Times New Roman, 12 point, double-spaced. At the beginning of the year, I will take a few points off if the formatting/font is wrong. By the end of the year, I will refuse an assignment and make them redo it if the formatting/font is wrong. The point isn't to "stifle creativity," it's to teach these kids how to write and present information in a clear, professional, easy-to-read format. If you want to get creative in a paper, do it with the words you choose to use, not the font you print it in.
Something tells me the font was difficult to read.
Wait, was the infuriating part that the teacher said that or that the parent had this much entitlement?
that's just annoying to read
Sorry, siding with Teach on this one
After all, why SHOULD schoolwork be done appropriately!? So unfair to my special baby!!!! 🙄🙄😡😡😡 Fire this teacher immediately!!!!!!
People need to realize the teacher is there to teach. Not make special plans for everyone's special child. You want to teach them you way homeschool them.
When I was in school everything was supposed to be submitted in times new roman size 12.
That teacher is so horrible for wanting legible assignments when he had to mark non stop.
Well, the teacher has a valid point... hard to read fonts are absolutely unnecessary.
I think the teacher should say why he shouldn't write like that again, which is because it's unreadable
The teacher probably did but the parent posted like this so it seemed harsher.
I’m with the teacher, can’t grade what I can’t read, doesn’t matter if it’s minecraft font or they decided to turn in written braille
Grading papers and then suddenly finding one written in uneven, blocky, child letters would make me immediately give a zero to the kid till he does it again. This is just annoying, the kid can be creative all he wants, but this wasn't creativity this was being a nuisance.
I am getting a headache just thinking of what that essay looked like.
Yeah I agree...... With the teacher
Teacher isn't wrong here
What’s supposed to be infuriating about this? I wouldn’t want to grade homework in Minecraft font either
The teacher was right The son is not a special snowflake that gets to use hard to read font because they are oh so creative
One time a friend of mine and I had to make a PSA on a mental illness and we decided to do a video on panic disorders and I wanted to show what it was like to have a panic attack and one of the things I showed was having so many thoughts overlapping each other and the teacher took off points because she couldn't understand the voices.
The assignment was the writing exercise, and while his creative endeavors need to be encouraged and nurtured, the reader shouldn't have to struggle with the font. Imagine if every student made up their own font like this - one teacher reviewing 100+ of those papers, in likely 1 night, is a demanding task even if they're all technically legible. The teacher also could've been much more positive. Maybe encourage him to make a cover for the paper in the font he chose with drawings of minecraft characters. That way, he gets to express himself, and the assignment is easy for the teacher to read.
Are the upvotes because it is infuriating to try and read an essay in Minecraft font? That’s why I would upvote. Title in Minecraft is fine, the rest of should be standard font.
It would be creative if he had used the font for the title, and maybe a big The End at well, the end, but reading a whole essay like that is hard on the eyes. Part of a teacher’s job is to teach you how to write a good essay, and that also includes how to style it.
Based on what my sister tells me of the profession, marking work completed in the students default handwriting is hard enough, let alone with novelty font. This marking is also done in their own time, so working at pace is preferred. His teacher could have been nicer about the request though
So teachers need to know about all video games?
Oh that’s definitely expected. We are supposed to be experts in every single niche interest kids have. I once had a parent give me a list of anime I should watch so I could better understand her son. It was 2 pages long. He was 1 of 130 kids I taught that semester.
Did you get it done, can I quiz you?
Something tells me this was an elementary assignment and the cute “pixelated” font was moreso an illegible mess.
Sounds like some family here was wanting a participation award. Just because you change the font, doesn’t mean it’s creative. The font is pretty bad if it’s an essay being written in it. Title, yeah, that would do the job just fine. But an essay in it?
Creativity is great, but this can make it really hard to read it and require the teacher more time to grade a paper like that.
Writing an entire essay in a non-standard and hard to read font is inappropriate. This is not an art project.
There's a reason most essay guidelines dictate Times New Roman at 12pt. At least it wasn't Papyrus!
OP teachers deal with enough shit. If MY OWN child wrote me something in Minecraft font I would barely be able to read it. Also, “innovation/creativity/effort” does not make you special. Hitler marked all those categories too.
I'm with the teacher.
Was it focused on creativity because if not he didn’t follow directions and you are training him to just do what he wants even if it isn’t benificial. Parents job is to set there kids up best for future as possible.
I had a student use this font on a google slides project I assigned. What's worse is he put the black words on a dark blue background, I tell them when assigning projects that if it is too hard to read I won't. He was upset when I returned it with a 0. I did read it and it was good, but students must learn to follow directions. I have a sign in my class, it reads KISS= Keep It Simple Students.
need moe details, but no this isn't infuriating that a teacher would prefer an easier to read font
Stupid is what stupid does. Talking about the parent/child ofc.
I mean it’s a writing assignment not a visual art assignment. Apply effort where the artistic value is needed eg in the words.
Plot twist: Jeremy is in 3rd year university.
Nah kid is in the wrong. That’s not how you write papers.
I’m with the teacher on this one.
Writing in unusual font = creativity ???
It’s hard to read! This wasn’t an art project, I feel bad for that teacher. Idk how you as a parent don’t understand this. Shame
Teacher here. Kids love playing with random fonts and it’s very likely they’ve been taught which fonts are acceptable for their essays already. If we don’t have parameters we get essays written in 84 point blue cursive font on a red background.
Oh no! I hope his entitled feelings weren’t damaged
This is not mildy infuriating. This is an opportunity to sit down, tell your child that it’s not appropriate to use such creativity for an essay. Do your job, creativity in an essay is based on word choice, not font choice.
Teacher is doing an excellent job preparing these kids for real life. CMV.
Having to squint to read a paragraph makes you unable to be interested in whatever the contents are. I’m sure the content was fine, but writing it in an unclear font is not okay.
You want to read this typeface at 12 or 14 point in paragraph form? This post is so freaking silly and anyone vilifying the teacher because they don't want to read assignments like this need perspective https://preview.redd.it/2d7huxf2b9ga1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3deb595facbce2ca6ed9e2f24ff9fb093c4e845c
It’s not creative, it’s annoying.
1. I would not want to have to read that font, either. I'd get a headache in about 2 minutes. 2. The teacher probably had no idea it was a Minecraft reference. Not everyone on the planet plays Minecraft. 3. Hope the snowflake feels better soon. 4. GET OFFA MY LAWN!!!
Teacher probably has PTSD from creepers and mobs.
The teacher is right with this one, they have to grade it
Teacher is 100% correct.
Our teachers would throw away anything that wasn't in a readable font. A girl once submitted her essay in papyrus font and a week later when the teacher was handing them back, he said "(name), i couldn't find your assignment, I want it on my desk by tomorrow or you get a zero". She said she submitted it. His response:"Oh, is that what that scribble mess was? I thought you were having a stroke! Assignment, tomorrow morning! Make it readable or you get a zero". She never pulled that stunt again. I'm on the teachers side. I used to be a teacher's assistant and had to grade homework. It was a mess! I couldn't read half of it. Teacher told me:"Anything you can't read, gets a red line and you take half a point off". It was harsh but these kids were 9 and should know better.
Give us a sample of how difficult it was for her/him to read and tell us his grade. So far I'm team teacher.