The typeface Peannaireacht was created for educational publisher Prim-Ed Publishing in the early aughts by a team of teachers and computer programmers led by Helen Wood, an Irish primary school teacher.
The design has been advertised as a combination of traditional and contemporary handwriting styles, and debuted in Prim-Ed Publishing’s series Handwriting Today. A modified version of the typeface, which features a different “s”, can be seen in the company’s latest handwriting textbook series, New Wave Handwriting, that is authored by Woods herself.
Peannaireacht is recommended for students in Class 1, while Prim-Ed Publishing also offers publications for senior infant level students featuring a pre-cursive style in a different typeface.
The typeface is slightly sloped, with fully-joined, continuous cursive letters with loops. They have rather narrow proportions and extenders of moderate length. The connecting strokes are diagonal and straight, and reach the next letter on the x-height as much as possible. The uppercase letters also have cursive shapes, though are not decorative. The uppercase “G” is distinctive due to its unusual shape.
