Perhaps you were not aware, or never questioned, that the lowercase letters “a” and “g” have such a distinctive condition. Because these two forms of representation are in our lives almost as long as we know ourselves, and we are used to seeing it that way.
But isn’t this very interesting? Let’s take a closer look at what makes these two letters special from the rest.
In fact, historically, the letter “a” has had many different forms.
Over time, various forms of this letter were used and many writing systems emerged. In fact, the use of letters often depended on the medium in which they were used.
For example, the Romans used two different styles of writing on stone, the “monumental” and the “concise style.” Afterwards, these different types of writing continued to differ with intermediate forms, and thus the letters “a” continued to be used with different spellings. This was exactly the same for the letter “g”.
However, even today, it has not been possible to reach a consensus on the spelling of lowercase letters “a” and “g”. Okay but why?
First, to avoid confusion, let’s name the spellings of these letters. As can be seen from the image, the single-layered “a” and “g” are the ones we usually use in handwriting; double-decker “a” and “g” are the preferred writing styles of these letters in printing houses.
In fact, we met the one-story form of the letter “a” in primary school and we adopted this letter as it is. The reason why this letter was taught to us in a single-layered form was that it was much simpler to write, as you can imagine.
Also, although still in some schools, cursive was preferred in the first grade of primary school, and it was also much more practical for younger children to write one-story variations of the letters “a” and “g”. In addition, 75% of people are in favor of continuing the use of single-storey a.
So what led to the introduction of the double-decker “a” and “g”?
Although the single-layered writing of these letters is easier for beginners to read and write, this form of the letter “a” was quite suitable to be confused with the letter “o”. For this reason, a double-decker variation of this letter emerged and its use became widespread in order to come to the fore in terms of distinctiveness.
These changed forms of the letters “a” and “g” continue to be used in all kinds of print works and in most written materials (newspapers, magazines, books) since the day they emerged.
However, there are those who change their preferences at this point. For example, Google used the double-decker “g” in its logo until 2015, now it continues with the single-deck g.
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