How a comms pro can head off an ‘elementary’ error

Communicators’ font of knowledge more than just knowledge of fonts

There’s an old saying in print journalism: It takes a dirty mind to run a clean newspaper.

Apparently it also takes a dirty mind — or, at least, a communicator’s eye for typefaces — to run a clean classroom. In the following case, one school teacher almost unwittingly distributed to her third-graders some school materials with X-rated lettering.

Though the incident took place almost three years ago, the lesson it offers endures: Not including a communicator in a project could result in embarrassingly bad publicity, as well as ill will.

Sexy font suggests tawdry activity

The screwup took place in September 2006, when a teacher at Pine Tree Elementary School in Monroe, N.Y., made a student handbook for a parent-teacher conference. That’s when things got interesting, according to Loreen Gill, who was part of a communications team that served the Monroe-Woodbury Central School District.