Historical fonts
The following fonts were found in various places on the internet; many were originally shared to the Quikscript Yahoo! Group (now on Groups.io). Some were found on the old Shavian Yahoo! Group (now defunct).
Note: these fonts use idiosyncratic encodings and many contain glyphs from copyrighted commercial fonts. While some were explicitly released as free software, most did not come with any kind of licence detailing copyright considerations. They are made available here in good faith for the purposes of research and preservation.
On this page:
Second Shaw
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jayson Barber | 2000 | Second Shaw | None provided |
·cAN At lEJGr wGz sHpeGrIGr t ·lInc In hIz rHJ, mGncN G lOzInj At T bErIGl In ·mErIGn skwar v ·hipeGrIGn T alIGn hH vAlyHd hIz bIlIGrdz so hilI.
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The earliest known computer font for Quikscript. The letters appear to have been vectorised from scans of Cole’s Funny Picture Book No. 2; the name Second Shaw and lack of · are also owed to that publication. It seems that the alternate “upside-down” · was mistaken for ·. The numerals and other symbols were borrowed from a Shavian font called ShawScript. Unique ASCII character mapping.
Jerome (Beta version)
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jon Zuck | 2000 | Jerome Beta | None provided |
/cAN At leZar waz sMpIariar t /linc in hiz rMZ, mancN a lozinJ At H berial in /merian skwEr v /hFpIarian H Elian hM vAljMd hiz biliardz sO hFli.
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A casual handwritten-style face with a relatively high waistline and strong stroke modulation. It includes the alternate · and ·, and some of the half-letters used in Senior Quikscript—plus the auxiliary letters · and ·. Also note the vestigial Shavian-style ligatures, which are a recurring feature of many older Quikscript fonts. Most of the non-Quikscript characters were taken from a Shavian font called Ghoti, which itself took some from Arial. Unique ASCII character mapping.
Jerome (final version)
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jon Zuck | 2000 | Jerome | None provided |
/cAN At leZar waz sMpIariar t /linc in hiz rMZ, mancN a lozinJ At H berial in /merian skwEr v /hFpIarian H Elian hM vAljMd hiz biliardz sO hFli.
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A font for Senior Quikscript with the requisite tight spacing and special alternate forms of certain letters. The letter skeletons are clearly distinguishable and resemble neat handwriting; but unfortunately, the kerning is rather overzealous—notice that some letters can appear to the left of the preceding letter. The optional letters · and · are now included. The character mapping is based on that of the Shavian fonts of the time.
Junior
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rick Allnutt | 2002 | Jerome, QS‑SAMPA | None provided |
/cAN At leZar waz sMpIariar t /linc in hiz rMZ, mancN a lozinJ At H berial in /merian skwEr v /hFpIarian H Elian hM vAljMd hiz biliardz sO hFli.
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An altered version of Jerome intended for Junior Quikscript. As such, the half-letters and some ligatures have been removed and the spacing has been made much looser. Two versions were produced: one with the same character mapping as Jerome and one adhering to QS‑SAMPA, which was one of the proposed community standards published on the Yahoo! Group.
Kwikskript
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen Bartok | 2003 | Jerome | None provided |
/cAN At leZar waz sMpIariar t /linc in hiz rMZ, mancN a lozinJ At H berial in /merian skwEr v /hFpIarian H Elian hM vAljMd hiz biliardz sO hFli.
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A Junior Quikscript font based on Jerome, with most of the letters reworked to more closely resemble those seen in the alphabet chart of the original Quikscript Manual. The strokes are now heavier and have rounded endings. · has been tweaked (coincidentally, resembling Shavian ·𐑵 owing to its symmetry) to make it display more clearly at small sizes. This font was superseded by Kingsley and King Plus.
King Plus
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen Bartok | 2003 | Jerome (modified) | “Freeware” |
/cAN At leZar waz sMpIariar t /linc in hiz rMZ, mancN a lozinJ At H berial in /merian skwEr v /hFpIarian H Elian hM vAljMd hiz biliardz sO hFli.
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This was originally an update of Kingsley, but has since fallen out of use and is no longer as up-to-date. More of the characters have been updated to match the new style and special glyphs for the Senior Quikscript half-letters have been added. Interestingly, the optional letters · and · have been given more cursive forms.
King Plus Monospace
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen Bartok | 2003 | Jerome (modified) | “Freeware” |
/cAN At leZar waz sMpIariar t /linc in hiz rMZ, mancN a lozinJ At H berial in /merian skwEr v /hFpIarian H Elian hM vAljMd hiz biliardz sO hFli.
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As the name suggests, this is a monospaced version of King Plus. It now contains the usual Quikscript-style angled brackets. It also contains compatibly-spaced Latin capitals which have been lifted from Arial and Arial Narrow—typing with these would require a custom keyboard layout to be installed, however, as the Quikscript characters still occupy the ASCII range as in the previous fonts.
Jeremy
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robert McBroom | 2004 | Jerome | None provided |
/cAN At leZar waz sMpIariar t /linc in hiz rMZ, mancN a lozinJ At H berial in /merian skwEr v /hFpIarian H Elian hM vAljMd hiz biliardz sO hFli.
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An early “serif” style font for Quikscript. The letters appear to have been created by reusing fragments of an existing typeface. Unfortunately, details such as variations in stroke width and the placement of serifs, spurs and ball terminals seem haphazard and unrelated to the way letters are handwritten, contrary to traditional Roman typefaces. The non-Quikscript characters are from the version of Times New Roman that comes with macOS.
Quickscript
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dale Franks | 2013 | Quickscript | None provided |
~JaN at leZur wuz sUpEuriur t ~linJ in hiz rUZ, munJN u lozinj at T beriul in ~meriun skwAr v ~hIpEuriun T Aliun hU valyUd hiz biliurdz sO hIli.
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An original geometric-style design. The design of · is an oddity, seeming to be mirrored compared to its recognised form. The numerals and punctuation appear to have been lifted from Futura. Nearly-unique ASCII character mapping, shared only with Quickscript Georgian (see below).
QuickScript Georgian
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dale Franks | 2013 | Quickscript | None provided |
~JaN at leZur wuz sUpEuriur t ~linJ in hiz rUZ, munJN u lozinj at T beriul in ~meriun skwAr v ~hIpEuriun T Aliun hU valyUd hiz biliurdz sO hIli.
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A font apparently made from rearranged parts of Microsoft’s typeface, Georgia. The result is arguably better than Jeremy, but it still suffers from some of the same problems.
Suave
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scott Ellsworth | 2015 | Suave | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 |
/cAG At leZar waz sUpIariar t /linc in hiz rUZ, mancG a lOzinj At D berial in /merian skwEr v /hFpIarian D Elian hU vAlyUd hiz biliardz so hFli.
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A customised version of Kingsley, as used in the document Quikscript as I use it (available in the Quikscript Group files area). It contains extensive kerning, plus added ligatures and diacritical marks for recording syllable stress and syllabic consonants. The character encoding has been significantly changed. The quotation marks and Pound and Euro signs—which I believe should be mandatory for all new Quikscript fonts—come courtesy of Comic Sans.
Quikscript Geometric
| Author | Year | Encoding | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Perry Hartono | 2017 | PUA | SIL Open Font License 1.1 |
The initial release of what would become Quikscript Sans. It lacks the ligatures and · is slightly different compared to the later version.