Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/55

Rh to an angle sufficient to give verticality (optically considered) to the down strokes, and will hold the pen as vertical writers hold it in spite of the repeated commands of their teachers to the contrary?

A pupil is restless and changes his posture or inclination to the desk and his Copy Book faithfully records the incident by a painfully apparent break in the parallelism of the writing, or he tilts his book or straightens it and the same undesirable phenomenon is presented.

In Vertical Writing none of these difficulties and anomalies distress the teacher, none of these absurdities vex the bodies and souls of our pupils.

There is no artificial or abnormal positions of head, trunk, arm, hand and pen to teach and secure, for every child will naturally assume the right posture; the book lies evenly on the desk and the writing follows the direction of the vertical instead of the legion of angles of direction peculiar to and inseparable from the oblique. The difficulties of both teacher and pupil are reduced to the lowest and so far as they can be, writing and the teaching of writing are pleasant factors in the daily routine.

Of equal value is the consideration that this greater ease is carried outside and beyond the mere teaching and learning of the art. To the Vertical Writer no weariness or "writers' cramp" will ensue from any ordinary or even extraordinary exercise of his art. The task of writing is proceeded with under the best conditions possible and thus it comes to pass that Upright Penmanship is not only taught in about half the time that the oblique style needs, but that it makes a much smaller demand upon the energy or working power of the ordinary writer to produce.

Another element in Vertical Writing bearing on the same point is that pupils can approximate very closely to the perfection of an engraved Headline, whereas this is impossible with the Oblique Style, unless to boys and girls of exceptional imitative and mechanical ability. The effect of this possibility upon the minds of children is simply incalculable. It is stimulative to an