Playwrite is a typeface engine that allows the creation of primary school cursive fonts.
The primary school curriculum, published by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and the Tanzania Institute of Education (TIE), was last updated in 2015. The first section, centered on the first two years of primary education (Standards 1 and 2) focuses on developing competencies in reading, writing and arithmetic. The TIE also publishes a syllabus that provides specific guidelines for the implementation of the curriculum. The syllabus states that students should learn print style letters first followed by cursive writing, but no models or samples are shown.
In practice, Standard 1 students learn an almost upright precursive and progress to a fully-joined cursive from Standard 2 onwards. The primers available through the free online library services supply detailed samples and practice materials that are used in classrooms.
This sloped continuous cursive style includes decorative capital letters. 'A' and 'H' feature looped crossbars, while 'G' has a cursive structure but lacks a descending stroke. 'M' and 'N' are constructed differently, with only one following a cursive format. The lowercase letters have looped ascenders and descenders. Curved entry strokes appear in 'm', 'n', and 'v', but are absent in 'w'. The letter 'q' includes a mirrored loop in its descender.
