Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1882-10-27
From the Spectator. !

Handwriting bears much blame that
does not belong to it. OF course man 8
writing ought to be legible, but allow
ance must be made for idlosyncracy,
fatigue, illness or haste. A handwriting
without peculiarities is landmark,
or checks upon false reading, and
us absolutely good writing is not to
be looked for in business life, the dull,
school-boy hand, with no special charac-
ter in it, is not without its dangers. The
very worst manuscript may be made out
by reader who can and will analyze
but readers who can and will analyze are
few. Here, ms elsewhere, there are not
many who find n pleasure in taking
trouble and applying obvious general
rules. Take the subject OF spelling, for
instance. The rule which decides i'll cer-
tain words whether, when the sound is
ee, the word shall be spelt Ell or lie, is SO
short and easy that any one who had no
previous knowledge Of human dullness
would think it utterly impossible that n
mistake should ever be made by writer
who had once cast his eye upon the rule 4;
but what the fact is, we have some of us
melancholy reasons for knowing. Now
take the case of n badly-written manu-
script. You will find II whole group of
people fumbling at a sentence, and max
ing as to one particularly obscure guesses
upon guesses, all Of which are simply
absurd When it is demoistrably clear
that the missing link must be an adverb,
you hear six sane men trying nouns or
verbs. 1t may be clear that the dark
word must be one of strong praise of a
given kind, the dictionary possibilities
of the case lying within narrow compass
but score of false shots will be made, be.
cause nobody has the brains or the will
to say for himself, "Whatever this word
may be we can positively determine what
it is not, and 50 limit our range of guess
ing"
There are here and there human beings
who are by nature incapable of writing Il
good hand, Just as there are others who
can not draw II straight line or true cir,
Gle, OF even recognize one. But the ugly
manuscript of the clumsy -fsted strug,
gler after form is usually very clear
Haste, uneasiness, excessive work, ner-
vous preoccupation-these are the chiei
causes of obscure handwriting with most
of us. But when mans manuscript has
once made for itself fixed character ol
its own, neither printers nor expert copy
lists would like it to come round again tC
tame simplicity and correctness. II
would be, ill another way, the case of the
lover with squint, who ruined his suit
by going to the occulist and getting his
eyes put straight, the lady could no Ion
ger meet his eyes in the old aflectionat.
way, and she dismissed him. Still, there
are faults of handwriting which are in
excusable i'll themselves, and which
neither compositor nor copyist can posi-
bly, like to see. One of the worst of these
is the lax practice in putting the strokes
to.such letters Ms m and.n. There is nj
harm in cutting down certain syllables
such as ment and ing, to mere lines ol
twirls ; but where an attempt is made tC
express the characters, the number oi
strokes ought to he uniform. Another
practical observation is that hurrid hand
writing gains no time for the writer
downright lazy scrawl is another matter
and SO is that kind of bad writing il
which we can see in the badness, egotis
tic self-assertion or disregard of the eyes
and wits of others. 1t may be laid down
that there is in MS much egotism (associated
it may be with much kindness) in the
man who writes bad hand which never
strives to pich itself up. But, OF course
the rule must be applied with greater ol
less stringency, according to the amount
of work that presses on the producer o
the manuscript, his health, his pre-occu
patton, and the activity of his self con
seriousness