# The Theory and Practice of Handwriting/Appendix 2

APPENDIX II
“On Perpendicular Writing in Schools” A Lecture delivered by Dr. Paul Schubert, on the 23rd Oct. 1890 before the Society of Public Hygiene at Nuremberg.
The proposal to replace the customary oblique writing by perpendicular characters arose from the endeavour to obtain an upright healthy writing posture in school-children, an object which hitherto, though means of every kind were tried, had never been attained. Every teacher knows how much patience and lung-power the constant injunctions to sit straight demand, how much time is thereby taken away from the proper tasks of instruction, and how nevertheless after a short period the children always sink back again into those bodily distortions with which we are all so familiar, as if a strong magnet were dragging down their heads towards the left side of the copy-book.
Complaints about this are of very ancient date and are repeated in almost every treatise on school hygiene. The worst of it is that every child very soon gets accustomed to his own peculiar cramped way of sitting, which he always resumes during the many hundred writing lessons of his school-life, so that always the same organs are again burdened and the same functions hindered. Everyone thinks chiefly of the dangers of short-sight and crooked growth; scarcely less prejudicial is the hindrance to full respiration and the impeding of the circulation of the blood in the organs of the lower body, with all their consequences, into the details of which we cannot enter here.
To two medical authors, Ellinger and Gross, belongs the glory of having explicitly pointed out in numerous publications, about 1874–5, that the cause of the bad posture of children while writing ought not to be looked for as hitherto in external matters, nor should the blame be laid on the teacher, but that the ultimate reason for oblique sitting lay rather in the way of writing itself; this latter would have to be entirely revolutionised, and in particular a copy-book pushed sideways towards the right must not be tolerated in the case of any child; for herein lay the root of the worst distortions of eye, head, and trunk. In the positive part of their labours, however, Ellinger and Gross were neither in agreement with one another, nor did their views coincide with what we to-day believe should be pronounced the solution of the question.
At first Ellinger demanded oblique writing on a copy-book lying obliquely before the middle of the body; but in the year 1885 he joined the Middle Franconia Reform Movement and professed the ​conviction that Vertical Writing in straight middle position is the only correct one.
Gross on the other hand desired perpendicular writing, but, strangely enough, at the same time a slightly oblique position of the copy-book. This is, as I hope to make clear further on, an internal contradiction which the first practical experiments in writing must have rendered obvious. Nevertheless it was the very fresh and stirring pamphlet of Gross that directed the attention of a wide circle to the need of a writing-reform, and thereby gave the impulse to all subsequent efforts. Thus it came about that Dr. Martins, District Medical Adviser, discussed the proposals of Gross in the Medical District Union at Ansbach, and carried a motion in the Middle Franconia Medical Council, to the effect that the Government should, through the official organs, have data collected as to the possible dangers of oblique writing. Simultaneously a critique by Mr. Methsieder, District School Inspector, was produced, which strongly advocated perpendicular writing. At the same sitting of the Medical Council in 1879, the president Dr. Merkel, Medical Adviser, also declared very decidedly in favour of Vertical Writing, which he himself had been exclusively using for many years.
Without going into details on the labours and counter-currents of the next ten years, I will now try to explain our present knowledge of the physiology of writing, and, in connection therewith, give an account of the results of the experiments with perpendicular writing in separate school-classes in Central Franconia, Flensburg and Vienna. In the question before us the direction of the down-stroke as regards the line of writing is the principal point; everything else depends on this. Downstrokes are formed by simple bending of the three writing-fingers, with the assistance at the same time of a slight bending at the wrist. In the upstroke the fingers by extension return again to their original position, while simultaneously the point of the pen is, by movement of hand or arm, pushed away a little towards the right. The first consideration, then, that forces itself upon us is: What direction of down-stroke is unconstrained and natural, and best suits the organs concerned in writing?
The following experiment will show.
Assume a straight symmetrical posture of body, lay a sheet of paper in the middle before you and place your hand ready for writing on it, leaving the hand however still in its position of rest without any sort of muscular tension. It will be seen that the palm of the hand is then not turned downwards towards the paper, as many ancient and modern writing-rules wrongly require, but that it stands perpendicular to the surface of the desk, and the whole hand lies exactly in the ​direction of the extended lower arm. The plane formed by the forefinger and thumb has a very slight inclination to the left, the fourth and fifth fingers are moderately bent, and the hand rests on the nail-joint of the latter.
This posture of hand secures to the fingers that hold the pen the greatest freedom of movement for up- and down-strokes. If now you close your eyes and, without turning or twisting the hand, blindly make a few movements and extensions of the three fingers that hold the pen, the strokes produced will be directed pretty exactly towards the middle of the body and at the same time stand perpendicular to the edge of the desk, supposing that the point of the writing pen is exactly in the middle, in front of the writer. The direction of these strokes, with regard both to the edge of the desk and to the breast, will of course remain exactly the same, if, other conditions being kept unchanged, the paper lies at one time oblique, at another straight before the middle of the body. Only their position relative to the edges of the sheet and to the line will change. They will stand perpendicular to the latter if the sheet lies straight, they will stand obliquely on it if the sheet is placed obliquely. If, however, you push the paper and the blindly writing hand away towards the right, and are careful that in this position the, action described above is maintained and the writing-motion completed without constraint by the bending and extension of the three fingers, then the down-strokes though directed as before towards the middle of the writer, will at the same time stand obliquely to the edge of the desk. Their inclination to the line will obviously here too be entirely dependent on the turning of the paper.
From this preliminary experiment the rule seems to follow that in writing, as well in middle position as in right position of the copy-book left positions do not conceivably occur in right-handed writing, it is always those down-strokes which are directed towards the breast of the writer that flow most easily from the pen. At the same time the possibility of producing other directions of the down-strokes by violent twistings of the hand is not to be denied, but, as the experiments described above seem to teach us, only such down-strokes as fall on the line of connection between pen-point and breast-bone are executed in accordance with the laws of hand-motion and without constraint.
Let us now see whether these personal observations are confirmed when we let others write, without influencing them at all, in any position of body and copy-book they please. In boys from eight to twelve years of age I measured in 1,586 cases the direction of the down-strokes in regard to the body, and found that with those who ​had their copy-book placed in the middle before them only slight deviations towards the right took place, amounting to 10°, in rare cases to 15°, and on the other hand also quite inconsiderable deviations towards the left, amounting to 5°, but that the average direction was with tolerable exactness straight towards the middle of the body.
This rule was found to be still more absolute in the case of those children who in writing had pushed their copy-book strongly towards the right; here almost in all cases the down-stroke coincided with a line drawn towards the breast. If the above observation really attains the importance of embodying a regular relation, then this must declare itself in the direction of the different down-strokes of every long line. Since in the course of such a line the position of the pen-point moves considerably towards the right, it is to be expected, presupposing the correctness of that observation, that the first and last down-strokes are not parallel but converge downwards, that is, towards the breast of the writer. Indeed, I was able to demonstrate such a relation in pupils’ handwritings in about 90 per cent. of the cases. That it was not always to be found is sufficiently explained by the care taken to give the down-strokes the same direction. It would now be in place to explain the regularity which has been discovered in the direction of the down-stroke from the anatomy and capability of movement of the writing-joints,–a task to whose solution Dr. William Mayer of Fürth has devoted himself.
The danger of remaining incomprehensible to persons who are not medical men, however, makes me renounce this attempt. From the law (which has since been recognised by all writers on the Vertical Style) that in unconstrained writing all down-strokes are directed towards the breast-bone, the relations which prevail between the direction of the writing and the different positions of the copy-book follow quite naturally. If the copy-book during writing is before the middle of the body, we have to distinguish whether it lies straight, so that its edges are directed parallel to those of the desk, or the side edges of the copy-book run up obliquely from left to right. The former is called the straight middle position, in which only and solely perpendicular strokes can be produced: the latter, on the other hand, is known as oblique middle position, in which the downstrokes must stand obliquely as regards the line at about the same angle as that which the copy-book edges form with the corresponding edges of the desk.
Further it is quite evident that if the copy-book lies to the right, whether it be straight or turned in the way just explained, the down-strokes must stand obliquely on the line. All right-positions ​therefore, are inseparably connected with sloping writing. At this point let us once more sum up: in straight middle position only Vertical Writing can be written, and, vice versa, Vertical Writing only in straight middle position. Sloping writing, on the other hand, can be produced equally well in oblique middle position and in straight and oblique right position. It will now have to be examined which of these positions of the copy-book is hygienically the best, and along with this decision judgment will also be passed as to whether the sloping writing, hitherto customary, is without injury for the school-child, or whether it is in this respect inferior to Vertical Writing. At the outset, then, both the right positions must be struck out of the competition; they are, according to the unanimous verdict of all experts, inseparably connected with dangers to the bodily development of the child, and ought as soon as possible to be most strictly forbidden in our schools.
The Spinal Column suffers in this position of the copy-book a twist to the right and at the same time an arched bend towards the left, and with many children there is developed, as William Meyer and Schenk have proved, from this faulty way of sitting at the writing, permanent spinal curvatures with elevation of the left shoulder. Further, with this posture the two eyes approach unduly near the writing, so that the production of short-sight is favoured. The right eye in particular is injured by greater nearness to the writing, stronger extension of the external muscles and increased internal strain (see Fig. 25, p. 87). It was against the obvious inconveniences inseparably connected with every right-position that Ellinger and Gross opened the fight, and since then in all the strife of opinions not one even among the warmest friends of Sloping Writing has been found capable of defending this way of writing.
The right position having thus disappeared, as completely impracticable, from the sphere of our further deliberations,–it is to be hoped that in the not far distant future it will finally disappear from school teaching also,–we shall now have to occupy ourselves in greater detail with estimating the rival merits of the two ways of writing still left, Perpendicular Writing in straight middle position and Sloping Writing in oblique middle position. That in both positions of the copy-book the downstrokes are directed towards the middle of the breast and stand perpendicular to the edge of the desk has already been proved; the difference therefore lies only in the way the paper is placed under the writing-hand. Since in straight middle position the edges of the copy-book are parallel to those of the desk, the down-strokes will come to stand perpendicularly in the copy-book too; if the page is twisted, then the down-strokes, whose direction is not twisted, receive an ​oblique position as regards the lower edge of the copy-book and the line.
So it is on the course of the lines that the whole difference (which, however, is not to be underestimated) of the two positions of the copy-book rests, and a contest has for years been going on between the defenders and opponents of Sloping Writing with regard to the influence which the direction of the line exercises on the bodily posture of children.
Let us first of all consider the action of the eye in this respect. Berlin and Rembold maintained that for our organ of sight it was of no importance whether the line ran parallel to the edge of the desk, or rose obliquely up from left to right; for though the eye in the course of the writing followed each single down-stroke, yet it did not follow the line. It was an easy matter to prove the contrary. In children at the age of from 8–12 years I found the movement of the eyes in the course of a line to amount on the average to 13°, and movement was hardly ever absent.
This oblique movement of the eyes up from left to right, however simple it may seem to the layman, is–for ophthalmological reasons which cannot be stated in detail here, but are estimated at their full value by all specialists–by no means a matter of indifference for the eye in the long run, having as its result a left inclination of the head with deepening of the position of the left eye. This was very plainly evident in measurements of the posture of the head assumed by children writing in oblique middle position; the left inclination of the head amounted, in the preponderating majority, to about 10°, sometimes even to from 20° to 30°; in straight middle position of the copy-book the posture was far better; William Mayer, who repeated my measurements on the school children of Fürth, has also confirmed this difference.
If now on the one side we have reason, with respect to the eye, to prefer straight middle position and Vertical Writing, on the other it was urged by the friends of Sloping Writing, that the obliquely rising line in oblique middle position was more comfortable for the hand to write than the horizontal one running parallel to the lower edge of the desk. The former could be written by simple turning of the arm round its point of support on the edge of the desk, whereas the latter required a repeated pushing of the arm towards the right in the course of every line. This offended–so Berlin in particular declared against the laws of movement of the hand, and on that ground Perpendicular Writing with its direction of the line was “unphysiological,” that is, contrary to nature.
Let us briefly examine these views. A more frequent movement ​of the arm is indeed requisite in Vertical Writing, but nothing unphysiological can be discovered in this fact. Otherwise we should have to suppose that in all the Middle Ages, which, as is well known, knew only perpendicular characters, or characters inclined at the most 10° to 15° to the right, violence was done to the wrist in the writing of every line for what reason no one understands and yet throughout those many centuries not a single person among millions of writers observed that this way of writing was uncomfortable, nay unnatural, and that the laws of movement of the hand demanded Sloping Writing with oblique direction of the line. In all the antique representations hitherto accessible to me of monks, women, and children in the act of writing the straight middle-position is without exception to be seen (see Figs. 1 and 2). To venture to describe such time-honoured customs as contrary to nature is really to depreciate the inventive faculty of our ancestors. At the same time it is by no means to be denied that in very quick writing, to which particular callings at the present day see themselves forced, Sloping Writing with oblique position of the paper is requisite; indeed I even think that in the growing need for rapidity of writing lies the cause of the predominance which within the last two centuries Sloping Writing has been gradually acquiring. The excessive right-inclination of the down-strokes, amounting to 45°, which to the detriment of the clearness and legibility of our handwritings has only in recent times become customary, must in any case be described as an error which nothing justified, not even haste and hurry. To attain the objects of quick writing a slightly oblique position of about 20° would abundantly suffice. But it seems to me in no way justifiable to use the oblique style in elementary teaching; it offers no advantage at all except in writing at headlong speed, and is therefore entirely unnecessary for the great majority of children not only at school but also throughout life. Moderately rapid writing, as school experiments to be mentioned later have shown, is quite compatible with perpendicular characters (see p. 122, also p. 153).
If sloping writing with oblique middle-position of the copy-book involved slight left-inclination of the head only, then a serious objection could scarcely be raised against this way of writing; every side-inclination of the head, however, has as its result, on statistical grounds, a compensatory twist of the spinal column, whose far reaching effect cannot be underestimated if we take into account the many hours which in the course of the whole school-time are spent in writing. The principal danger lies in the fact that there are no means of keeping children who write the sloping style fixed in middle position with moderately oblique position of the copy-book; even under the eyes of the teacher, and still more in writing without expert oversight, there ​appears almost in all scholars a nearly irresistible mania for turning and pushing the copy-book, till the body is twisted in a dangerous way and assumes a posture which seems incredible when seen before one fixed in a photograph. Some children carry the turning of the copy-book too far, the direction of the lines becomes uncomfortable for the arm in the normal posture of writing, the right elbow is pushed on to the desk, the right shoulder follows, moves forward and rises, the body supports itself with the right side against the writing desk, the spinal column is turned towards the left about its axis of length and shows an arched curve towards the right, while the left arm entirely slips down from the desk, on which only the fingers of the left hand still find a sorry support. Others, and indeed the majority of children, fall into the opposite fault, the copy-book is placed only slightly oblique, and therefore pushed so much the further towards the right, while the bodily distortions characteristic of right positions now show themselves.
This, then, is the most serious hygienic disadvantage of Sloping Writing,–and there is absolutely no way of obviating it,–that it allows the children to abandon the oblique middle position recommended by Berlin, with moderate turning of the copy-book of 30°–40°, in which the posture, though worse than in Vertical Writing, is at any rate tolerable, and to assume middle positions in which the copy-book is turned through much too great an angle, together with any degree of right position they choose, with all conceivable bodily distortions. Perpendicular Writing, on the other hand, can only be produced in straight middle-position, and so gives a guarantee that the children will be preserved in the preparation of their home-lessons also from the bad cramped postures which threaten health in so many ways. The Hygiene of the home-work forms an exceedingly important section of school organization, but lies, in the nature of the case, to a great extent beyond our influence.
We are deprived of the possibility of securing for the child in its parents’ house, good light, a writing-desk suited to its stature, and a well-ventilated room; and all that school hygiene has up to the present been able to do in favour of the home-lessons has been limited, besides quantative restriction of them, to the improvement of the printing. We ought to gladly and vigorously take hold of the new and exceedingly important handle which Vertical Writing offers for hygienic regulation of the writing-posture in the parent’s house; in it I see by far the most essential advantage of Perpendicular Writing.
Though Sloping Writing be encompassed with well-intentioned and carefully thought out regulations as to the position of the copy-book and the posture in writing which must be maintained, it will ​never be possible to attain a certainty or even any probability that the children will remember these precepts when writing without supervision. Sloping Writing, and this is its fundamental fault, can be written in many different postures, and by preference in the most distorted of all; Vertical Writing, however, possesses a kind of automatic steering apparatus, whereby it avoids bad sitting during writing.
Let what has been said suffice to indicate the scientific basis of the writing reform in its main points. At the present day, after we have accumulated several years’ practical experience in schools with regard to Vertical Writing, detailed investigation of many of the more difficult divisions of the preliminary inquiry may well be omitted; especially it seems to me unnecessary in this place once more to enter into details on the alleged law formulated by Berlin of the rectangular intersection of downstroke and eye-base line, since I venture to consider it contradicted by numerous measurements of my own which were confirmed by Schenk, Daiber, and Ausderan, and since besides it has no bearing whatever on the practical solution of the question. In our writing-reform, as in all the departments of Hygiene, no matter how thoroughly theory may have prepared the way, the decisive word is always to be looked for only from the test of practice. The earliest experiments in schools were undertaken in Middle Franconia, the cradle of the Vertical Writing question in its present form; individual teachers of Fürth and Schwabach have now been practising Vertical Writing for three years, those of Nuremberg for two years, and what those men say, who have not employed Vertical Writing only cursorily and superficially for a few weeks, but have used it exclusively in their classes throughout the full school-year from the first stroke on the slate to copy-book writing, what judgment these competent critics give, in this lies the decision with regard to Vertical Writing as a school writing. The teachers of our district know that these tests have turned out exceedingly favourable.
Written reports from the gentlemen at Fürth and Schwabach, as well as the lecture of Herr Wunderlich at the last Nuremberg District Teachers’ Conference, allow me to cut short my account of the proceedings at home, and the more so as the results obtained here coincide in all essential points with those collected abroad. There is only one thing I should like to mention, that my photographs of children writing vertically and obliquely, which caused some sensation here as well as in Munich, show better than many words the difference in the posture of body. The objection raised from many sides that an attentive teacher would not allow such awkwardness even with Sloping Writing, rests on a complete misapprehension of ​the object of these photographs. They ought by no means to raise a complaint against the teacher of the obliquely-writing children; I am convinced that he at sight of such a bad posture at once interposes with severe reproof, that he does this incessantly every day from year’s end to year’s end, and is forced to do it because the children, not by his fault, but through the fault of the oblique writing, after a few minutes always wrinkle up again like moistened pasteboard. What the photographs ought to teach is, that the teachers in obliquely writing classes perform a labour like that of Sisyphus when they try to train the children to sit erect, that the little ones only pull themselves up by fits and starts in consequence of the command, and almost only during the time it lasts, and that in the home-lessons a picture such as that represented presents itself without any resistance. We must really also confess to ourselves, quite in confidence, that even in the school, when the teacher does not constantly preach “sit straight,” when, following his principal task, he buries himself in the subject he is teaching, often enough the photographic pictures present themselves. In the taking of them neither the children who wrote vertically nor those who wrote-obliquely were commanded to sit upright, in order that the conditions might resemble as much as possible those that exist in the daily home-lessons. That the posture of the former, therefore, is incomparably better, is obvious from the photographs.
It is a matter for congratulation that the theoretical treatises on Vertical Writing issuing from Middle Franconia have been tested also in other parts of Germany and caused practical experiments in many classes.
According to information received by letter from Principal Scharff at Flensburg, in May 1889 the Prussian Government of Schleswig-Holstein issued through the district School inspectorate a circular in which it was required that in writing the angle of elevation of the characters should amount to not less than 70°. By this enactment the authorities in Schleswig seem desirous of finally doing away with the excessive obliquity of 45° which has hitherto been generally demanded. At Scharff’s suggestion the teachers of Flensburg went a step further still, and after the above-named teacher had first had one class writing vertically since December 1888, in June 1889 introduced Perpendicular Writing into most of the public schools. At the close of the school year Scharff declared in a lecture that the bodily posture in Perpendicular Writing is an unconstrained one, does not hinder the writing-activity, and is employed by the scholars in their home-lessons also. Perpendicular Writing, he said, by its superior clearness most perfectly accomplishes the object of writing, and is easiest to ​learn, since the child brings the idea of the perpendicular direction with him into the school, and since this idea can here at any time be easily rectified by reference to perpendicular walls, doors, etc., which is not the case with any other angle of elevation.
In a writing competition which Scharff instituted between his scholars and those of an equally high class in another school, it was found that at least as great rapidity was attained with Perdendicular Writing as with sloping. His best scholar required twenty-four minutes to copy a poem, the best among the rivals thirty minutes.
In December 1889 the “Schleswig-Holstein School News” contained the following intelligence from Flensburg: “The enactment of the Imperial Government, concerning the less oblique position of the letters in writing, has led to an experiment being made here with Perpendicular Writing, the results of which up to the present may be described as favourable almost beyond expectation.”
Vertical Writing has attained prominent importance in Vienna, where Principal Emmanuel Bayr has adopted it with great success. His first experiments began in April 1889, with from three to four children in each of the five lower classes, while the others wrote in oblique middle-position, in which the prescribed angle of inclination of the head was marked on the writing-desk.
Afterwards, in the District Teachers’ Conference of the sixth Vienna Communal District, Bayr delivered a lecture on the result of his experiments, in which he very decidedly advocated Vertical Writing, relying on a critique by Herr Toldt, Prof, of Anatomy, which appeared in print in Bayr'’s pamphlet entitled “The Vertical Roman Style of Writing,” and contains a critical sifting of the reasons adduced by authors for and against Perpendicular Writing, with the result that Vertical Writing is given the preference on account of its favourable influence on an erect posture of body. Bayr as well as Toldt, and with them the whole subsequent reform-movement in Vienna, put forward at the same time the demand that the so-called German Current Hand should be abandoned and be replaced by the Roman character. The Middle Franconia Medical Council, as is well-known, has thought it more desirable not to connect the question of the Roman character with that of Vertical Writing.
In the autumn of 1889 Bayr began to employ Vertical Writing to a greater extent in the public school of five classes which is under his control. Both parallel courses of the first school-year, and also one parallel course of the second class, wrote vertically, while the other course wrote obliquely in oblique middle-position (according to Berlin) as hitherto; similarly in the third class. In the fourth and fifth class individual scholars wrote perpendicularly, the others ​obliquely in oblique middle-position. Principal Mock, too, began with Vertical Writing in the first class of his public school, as also some first classes in the ninth district. At Bayr’s request these experimental classes were repeatedly visited during the past school year by the most prominent educationalists of Vienna, as well as by medical authorities, who, according to intelligence received by letter from Bayr, all without exception were convinced of the hygienic superiority of Vertical Writing and have since then for the most part themselves actively led the way in favour of Vertical Writing. For example, on the 9th of April a commission, consisting of the District School Inspector Herr Fellner, Principal George Ernst, and several teachers, inspected Bayr’s schools; in the fifth class the vertically writing children were required to place their copy-book obliquely and to write obliquely: “The children now wrote obliquely, and their fine posture vanished; they sat badly; nothing more was to be seen of a straight bodily posture. But when ordered to place their copy-book straight again and to write vertically, they sat as straight as a rush.” On the 19th of April Prof. Fuchs, the Vienna ophthalmologist, spent two hours in Bayr’s school. In the first vertically writing class he found a model posture and clear writing. In the case of one child the eyes were found to be 32 c. m. distant from the writing. In the other cases no measurement was made, because it was seen that the distance was approximately the same. In the obliquely-writing course of the second school-year Prof. Fuchs found, in spite of the fact that oblique middle-position was enjoined, some children writing with straight right-position. The governess, on being questioned, explained that the children always abandoned the oblique position in spite of admonitions.
“Prof. Fuchs now observed the children who had their copy-book placed in the way required by Berlin and Remboldt. These children sat badly, like the rest.” In the fifth class some wrote vertically, others obliquely…. “Of those who wrote vertically only one out of about twenty sat badly, of the obliquely-writing children the majority…. At his request the children were colectively asked before the writing to sit straight, but only the vertically writing succeeded in this.”… “The following direction was now given to the children: ‘All write as quickly as you possibly can.’… The vertically-writing were ready simultaneously with the obliquely-writing children, and no difference as regards rapidity was apparent.” Prof. Fuchs found that the perpendicular writing was clearer than the oblique. One vertically-writing female pupil attracted his attention by her bad way of sitting; it turned out that the child had only been writing vertically for three days. The results in the other classes ​were similar. Prof. Fuchs has meanwhile published in the “New Free Press” (morning edition, 20th May, 5th year) an article in favour of Vertical Writing, in which among other things he says that the expectation that Sloping Writing in oblique middle position must allow an equally good bodily posture as Vertical Writing in straight middle-position has not been fulfilled. “Theoretically the two ways of writing should be almost equivalent, and both ought to be capable of being produced with equal ease in the correct posture of body.
“But all theory is vague; of this our recent school-visit ought to have convinced us.”
The Middle Franconia Medical Council is well acquainted with the fact that the author as early as 1880 had declared the oblique middle-position incompatible in the long run with an erect posture in sitting, on theoretical grounds, and on account of the necessity of pursuing the obliquely rising line with the eye. On the 10th of May Bayr received a visit from Max Gruber, Professor of Hygiene, who delivered a lecture at the next sitting of the Supreme Council of Health on the very favourable impression which the posture in Vertical Writing made upon him, and moved that a commission be entrusted with the testing of Vertical Writing.
Accordingly Herr Albert, Court Councillor, Professor Gruber, and Dr. von Wiedersperg from the Supreme Council of Health, and also Prof. E. Fuchs, Prof. von Reuss and Prof. Lorenz were named extraordinary members of this commission, which then on the 4th of June, with the accession of Dr. Immanuel Kusy, Ministerial Councillor and Secretary Adviser in the Ministry of the Interior, inspected the vertically-writing children in Bayr’s school and expressed themselves in terms of praise. Meanwhile, however, as the “Journal of Education and Instruction” (No. 8, 2nd year) informs us, Herr Albert, Court Councillor, has already in his lectures declared for Vertical Writing.
In July, Vertical Writing with the Roman character stood on the order of the day of the tenth Vienna District Teachers’ Conference.
The speakers had all taken an opportunity either of testing Vertical Writing themselves in their own classes or of studying it with Bayr. Theses were heard at all the conferences in favour of Vertical Writing, and were accepted, with exception of the tenth district, where the thesis on Vertical Writing was defeated by 66 votes against 62.
Finally a few more reports received by letter on Bayr’s vertically-writing classes may be mentioned. Principal Bayr says with regard to the experiments in the fifth class, part of which writes perpendicularly, part obliquely (with oblique middle-position): “The governess lays great stress on the erect posture of the children.”
​At the beginning the children all sit straight. To the specialist, however, even at the outset, the straight posture of the vertically-writing children is remarkable; the others lose this fine erect posture at the first stroke which they make obliquely. After the lapse of three minutes the sloping writers will fall together (collapse). After ten minutes they assume the most peculiar posture, after a quarter of an hour their head is scarcely 12 to 14 c. m. distant. The vertically-writing children remain sitting straight during the whole writing lesson, and in as good a posture as at the beginning. Usually after four to five minutes the stranger can distinguish all those who wrote vertically from behind without having seen the writing. Dr. Aloys Karpf, Custodian of the Imperial and Royal Trust Commission Library, writes: “To-day I had an opportunity, along with Principal Francis Zdarsky and Teacher H. Saik, of observing the progress in this way of writing among the children in several classes of Principal Immanuel Bayr’s school. It was observed that the posture of the children, on each of the many times they set themselves to write, was, with astonishingly few exceptions, a model one. The advantage of the endeavour to attain such a posture cannot, from the standpoint of school hygiene, be sufficiently often emphasised. Attempts to make the children write rapidly in this way succeeded to the particular satisfaction of Principal Zdarsky, who attached special importance to this point. To judge by the experiments, especially in the first class, I am disposed to adopt the psychologically explicable assumption that more pleasing forms are more quickly attained with those children who begin at once with Vertical Writing than with those who are urged to Vertical Writing only when already practised in the sloping writing.”
Caroline Seidl, city governess, who teaches under Bayr in the fifth writing class (mixed) reports: “The female pupils of the fifth class were introduced to Vertical Writing only at the beginning of the school year 1889–1890. The transition from the Sloping Writing practised during four years to Vertical Writing involved not the least difficulty for the children in respect to the posture of body, holding of pen, or technical execution. It was also an easy thing for them on command to pass from Vertical Writing at once back again to Sloping Writing….
“…All the children who were introduced to Vertical Writing afforded, in respect to faultless sitting and caligraphy, thoroughly satisfactory and frequently even surprising results…. On comparing the writing of a copy-book in which the writing was first sloping and later vertical, one could perceive with satisfaction how much prettier and more regular an impression was made on the ​beholder by the Vertical Writing as contrasted with the Sloping Writing. What a salutary tranquil look a vertically writing class keeps, what a restless spirit prevails among a number of obliquely writing scholars with the constant change of the posture of the body and position of the copy-book which can never be completely kept in check even with the most attentive supervision. This year I have made repeated experiments in regard to the point just mentioned, with the female scholars of the fifth class. In respect to rapidity of execution, too, I have not been able to find any kind of hindrance in the use of Vertical Writing; there were, indeed, many sloping writers who could not follow the vertical writers. When compared these rapid writings show a great difference in respect to their clearness and legibility, which decided in favour of Vertical Writing.”
From the remaining parts of Austria also come reports as to the growing interest in the question of Vertical Writing, which among others has been discussed at the District Teachers’ Conferences of Schwanenstadt in Austria, of Egydi-Tunnel in Styria, and of Salzburg.
The educational literature of Austria is much occupied with Vertical Writing; see for example Rieger’s “Journal for the Austrian Public School System,” 1890, Nos. 8 and 11. “The Public School,” 30th year, Nos. 24 and 26. “The Lower Austria School News,” 3rd year, No. 22. “The Journal of Education and Instruction,” 4th year, No. 8. In Buda-Pesth, Prof. Joseph Fador advocates the introduction of Vertical Writing. In Hamburg also on the initiative of Dr. Kotelmann Vertical Writing was experimentally introduced into a higher girls’-school. In Antwerp Vertical Writing is recommended by Dr. Mayer, school doctor (“The Female Teachers’ Guardian,” 1st year No. 6, p. 13). For a series of years Dierckx’ writing has been practised in Brussels; though not quite perpendicular, it is at any rate steep and only inclined about 15° towards the right. With it the children maintain a hygienic posture, as has been recently boasted again by Dr. von Sallwürck, Member of the Council of Education (“Journal of School Hyiene,” 1890, No. 1, p. 56). In France, as was evident at the International Congress of Hygiene in Vienna 1887 and in Paris 1889, there prevails the most gratifying unanimity on the part of all the authorities of public hygiene in favour of Vertical Writing.
With gratifying unanimity the experiments made in the most diverse parts of Germany show that Vertical Writing quite materially improves the posture of the children, that it allows the degree of rapidity required in the school and quite sufficient for the preponderating majority of callings, is in case of need easy to convert into Sloping Writing, surpasses the latter in clearness and offers besides many kinds of educational advantages.
​It is my firm conviction that Vertical Writing when generally introduced does not burden the teachers, as many believe, with a new and difficult work, but on the contrary quite materially lightens for them the very heavy and rather thankless labour of constant exhortations to a better bodily posture, and gains them time and strength for working at their principal task, education and instruction. I trust that a not too distant future will confirm this prophecy.