A separable space is strongly sequentially separable if, for each countable dense set, every point in the space is a limit of a sequence from the dense set. We consider this and related properties, for the spaces of continuous and Borel real-valued functions on Tychonoff spaces, with the topology of pointwise convergence. Our results solve a problem stated by Gartside, Lo, and Marsh. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.