Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/50

32 which regulate and fix the rate of pen-travelling we find several considerations must enter into the discussion and that each is adverse to sloping penmanship. The conclusions of Chapter II. are both pertinent and vital to the discussion. Position or the posture of the writer is of the highest moment. A free easy and normal attitude must be more favourable to and will also secure a higher speed than a stiff, constrained and painful position could possibly permit.

If, as it has been abundantly proved, the posture in Vertical writing be free and natural whilst in Slanting writing it is twisted and awkward the question of relative speed is conclusively settled. The advantage which a natural posture offers and secures to the vertical writer must guarantee a higher rate of pen-travelling. The slanting writer is heavily handicapped and comes in a very bad second. (See pp. 23, 121, &c.)

Furthermore it is found that the strokes which a vertical writer makes in his movements with the pen are quite as easy as those made in the sloping style and far shorter, for careful calculations show that the ordinary oblique writing necessitates the pen moving over 20 to 25 per cent. more length of outline than Vertical writing of the same size, that is between the same parallels, and that it accordingly occupies that amount of extra time. A reference to Fig. 13 will make this apparent. Approximately the lengths of the continuous letters in the five lines are as 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

Now unless it can be shown that ten units of work require no more time to execute or perform than six units of the same work it is obvious that Upright Penmanship must be more rapid than oblique. It is not needful to say that six miles can be much more speedily covered than ten miles, and six inches than ten inches.

This being so, the amount of waste–waste of time (of labour and material also as will be presently proved)–that is going on in the caligraphiccalligraphic [sic] world is a very grave consideration.

Gratifying corroboration of this proposition has reached us from the continent where extensive experiments have been made