Page:Theory and Practice of Handwriting.djvu/72

54 Two forms of are also practised, the script and type outlines (see p. 95). There can be no hesitation here as to which is preferable. The reduced capital may be more ornate but it is neither so legible nor so rapidly written. It should consequently be discountenanced and discarded in favour of the ordinary and simple form which assimilates so perfectly in conjunction with every other letter of the alphabet.

Another letter to be noticed is, and again the minimized capital or type form has been introduced as a rival to the script and more easily written outline. Of course it is a mere fanciful preference that would use the type, which whilst it gives a certain artistic effect to the style retards the progress of the writer to a rather serious extent. We should pronounce unhesitatingly for the ordinary script form of the sibilant and we think we carry nine hundred and ninety-nine writers out of every thousand with us. Just a word "en passant" as to the large number of persons who are in the habit, unfortunately, of making a particular shape of letter the test of a System of Handwriting. Incredible as it might seem many teachers have denounced Upright Penmanship because some special pet form of capital or small letter was not found in the Series of Headlines of the Copybooks. Or on the other hand because some outline of a Capital Letter which was obnoxious to them had been introduced.

The small letter which we have just examined has been the sole basis for a decision between Sloping and Vertical Writing. To judge any system of Handwriting by such insignificant tests is both irrational and unkind.

Another vexed question to which we might refer is the varying heights of the long letters. Shall there continue to be three or four sizes of these long letters, or shall there be only one? Common sense, science and consistency would say only one, and custom clenches the argument, for it will be found that in the current hand of our every-day life all the lengths reduce themselves to one almost universal height. When this is so, where is the necessity or advantage in teaching three different sizes? Certainly the labour of teaching would be diminished if only