Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/38

20 to the direction of the lines of print. Moreover in writing it will usually be seen that the ground strokes of the letters stand perpendicular to this prolongation of the base-line of the eyes. The direction of the lines of writing and the angle which the downstrokes make with those lines influence considerably therefore the attitude of the head and body of the writer. But even here there soon appeared a difference between theory and practice. People thought that if only the ground strokes came to be vertical to the edge of the desk the base line of the eyes must needs remain parallel to this edge and so the whole body exhibits an upright posture. But this was not so. In the so-called oblique middle position (see Chap. VII. for explanation) of the Copy Book the above postulate was fulfilled and the children sat awry. It became manifest that the direction of the lines exercised a great influence on the attitude of the body and that the school children placed the base-line of their eyes parallel to the edge of the desk when the lines also ran parallel to it provided that a turning of the head was not necessitated by the obliquity of the letters, i.e., provided the ground strokes stand upright on the lines or in other words that vertical writing is used.

To Principal Dr. Bayr we owe the service of having first proved by experiments on a large scale the accuracy of the hypotheses or theoretical considerations we have just briefly stated. They triumphantly furnished the proof. The position of the scholars in Vertical Writing is an exemplary one; the head is slightly bent and remains—which, to the oculist, is the most essential point—at a suitable distance from the desk, and therewith the whole body preserves a correct attitude. The desks on which these experiments took place were not such as to exercise especially favourable effect on the posture and it was observed that the same scholars who sat correctly in Vertical Writing at once assumed the faulty posture which is found in all schools during writing as soon as they wrote a sloping hand. In fact it could easily be recognised by the attitude of the body in which style they were writing when part of the pupils were instructed to write sloping and part upright.