Yay! Breakthrough
4a = slightly looser, better defined coils
4b = small coils, less definition
None of that zigzag, crinkly, "z" shaped crap
Now... my interpretation of 4a is skewed. Who has type 4 hair with very defined, easy to see coils... like a type 3, but smaller scale? Never saw that either.
Dang!!
I guess 4a has more definition than 4b, but less than type 3's?
To the 3 lines you have in bold, I would say 1) yes, 2) yes, and 3) no. For the one about who has defined curls like type 3s but on smaller scale, aka 4a, I would say Cheleigh on this board is a perfect example of 4a. I saw a picture of Poohbear's hair when it was shorter and freshly washed and untouched and it coiled up into perfect tiny O coils all over her head, another example of perfect 4a pattern. As limited as the typing system is, I think it just wouldn't make any sense to say that that type of hair and my type are the same.
You aren't the first to make a discussion of the "no zig zag" thing. It came up on a board specifically for 4bs, the cnapp forum. I think looking at the same bit of hair, different people see different things. Even in crazy coil's and Justkiya's hair, I see zig zags as well as curls. Curls are smooth round transitions in the hair, zigzags are sharper bends. Someone on the cnapp forum said "the number 5" would be a better descriptor for most of our hair and I agree. Because the number 5 has both a round part and a sharp bend part. My hair has both patterns on every strand. Different cnapps on that forum will have more or less of one pattern or the other, some with more bends than curls, some with more curls than bends. The common factor for us is the lack of clumping.
In practice, however, the typing system for 4b seems to have taken on a definition of its own outside of what the original description was and that is now one of clumping vs. non-clumping.