Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/54

36 of letters brought any morning by post, counting the letters and words in an equal number of lines of about equal-sized writing in each style. Two results will ensue. The Vertically written letters will be more legible, and secondly they will contain about 40 per cent, more matter in the same space. In a word there is no question on this point of economy, as its strongest opponents have conceded the claim and advantage of Vertical Writing without an exception. Finally it must be remembered that such an economy in time and space carries with it a corresponding saving in both labour and material so that the advantage thus gained is one of great value to the community at large.

The last quality or standard of comparison we have to examine is one of the most interesting—first to juveniles, next to teachers and thirdly to the general public. How do the several styles affect the pupil or learner, the instructor and the ordinary writer? We take the first two together. In all schools and educational establishments where any profession of teaching writing is made, the one great complaint is the insuperable difficulty in securing the right slope and in obtaining a uniform parallelism of slope. Hut there is an equal difficulty with the writers or pupils themselves, for not one teacher in a hundred is successful in obtaining satisfactory results. First there is the unnatural position of the body, sideways to the desk; next there is the awkward position of the arms, pressed close in to the side; then the hand must be twisted outwards, the pen must point inwards or over the shoulder of the writer and when all this is posed fixed and obtained (we would ask when is it obtained) then the worst trouble of all has to be faced, viz., to arrange the writing, determine its angle of obliquity, write at that angle, and maintain the angle uniformly throughout the page.

But it is a notorious fact that children naturally do and certainly will write vertically whether their teachers sanction it or not. Is it not true that pupils almost uniformly tilt up their books