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28 about A.D. 1300. Sometimes it had a tail ("punctus cattdatus") and looked not unlike an inverted comma. It did not, however, acquire its present meaning till about a century later.

22.—There is no rule as to the length of stems, and they vary greatly. The stems in a single group of notes are as often as not of different lengths, according to the position of the notes and the direction taken by the hook. A common fault is to make them too short, especially when the four hooks of a sixty-fourth note have to be added. This, however, is generally the result of a badly directed hook (see a, Fig. 18).

23.—As to the direction they take there is a definite rule. In open score (when one part only is being written on a stave), the stems of notes above the middle line should be turned down, the stems of those below the middle line should be turned up (see b, Fig. 1 8). The object of this is to keep the stems within the stave and prevent their sprawling above or below. The ill-equipped writer betrays himself by nothing more often than by sprawling stems.

The stems in a group of notes are generally turned according to the direction of the first note, or the majority. In a group containing a wide skip they are often turned individually according to the rule, involving opposite