Dotted Fonts
Most of us begin our journey of handwriting by starting with tracing on dotted letters. There are many readily made books selling in the bookshop. However, they are of single purpose of learning to write alphabets and they are costly.
I will teach you step by step how to do your own multi-purpose dotted characters pages so that you can use it to suit your purpose in a better and more cost efficient way.
1. Download the necesary fonts.
You will need a specific font that is dotted and with correct hand-writing style. For example, the letter “a” should not be a tail on top. Although it is ok to write as “a” it will be better if they resemble the normal hand-written style that we normally write so as to minimise possible confusion. This is very important for younger children as they will immitate whatever printed style and become their preferred style later on. At later stage, they may then be introduced to other styles. For the beginning, it is essential that you pick a “right” style for them for the start.
Here is a suitable font you can download.
a. Go to the Forum
b. Login.
c. Go to the “For Members Only” section.(It is only visible if you signed in as registered member).
d. Open the “Free Download: Dotted Fonts” topic
e. Follow the instruction to download the font.
f. Save as “Dot.zip” in C:temp directory. You may also save as any file name with extension of .zip.
2.Unzip the fonts
You need to unzip the file before you can use it.
a. Go to C:temp
b. Double-click on dot.zip
c. Extract the all files to C:temp.
d. The only one file you need for dotted font is “PrintDashed_TT.ttf” file. However, other 2 fonts are very useful as well for handwritten fonts.
e. Read the Readme.txt for use rights.
3. Install the font
a. Go to Control panel in your Microsoft Windows.
Click on “Start” , “Settings”, “Control Panel”.
b. Double-Click on “Fonts” in the control panel.
c: Click on “File”, “Install New Font…”
d. When the following window pop-up, navigate to the folders where dot.zip resides. In this case, I choose c:temp. A list of available fonts will appear. You can click on the individual fonts “Print Dashed (True Type)” or click “Select All” to install all the fonts. Once done, click “OK” to install.
4. Test it out!
a. Open Microsoft Words, Excel, Powerpoints or any applications that uses fonts.
b. Choose fonts “Print Dashed“.
c. Type some words.
d. Congratulations if you see your words appearred as dotted characters.
Uses for Dotted Fonts
There are many usages of dotted fonts. You can use it for the normal handwriting practices and adjust the fonts size to suitable age. Bigger fonts size of “48” and above for younger child and reduce the fonts as your child is older.
You can also use it for aiding spellings. Use is up to your creativity. Please share with us other ideas by posting a comment here.
