The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-04-21
ABOUT HANDWRITING.
An Expert Declares That It u
Degenerating.
The Chirogrsphy OF Writers for the
Press Growing Worse Account
of Hurry and Fatigue-FauIts
of Teaching.

Is it true that handwriting is growing
worse and worse all the world over?
This is the statement of MIR jackson IN
his Theory and Practice of Hand
writing" Official reports, SAYS the
| London News, seem to confirm MIR
.Iackson's belief. On the other hand,
persons of considerable experience in
reading literary manuscripts and exam
ination papers of the higher orders can
| hardly agree with him. As d rule. the
manuscripts of novels aud of examina-
tion papers are legible and even rather
pleasing. The exceptions are scarcely
four per cent. in examination papers; in
novels an author foolishly sends in a
mere rough draft. with eraSions and adj
ditions tackled ON by pins or waste ends
of postage stamp paper. But these ex-
amples of handwriting are the work,
except as regards many novels, of
rather highly educated persons, and
they throw no light on the hands of
people far from literacy.
The letters of servant girls aud of
other people without aspirations tolcul-
ture are often penned iii excellent and
characteristic hands. and. on the whole,
we do not think that the age writes i'll,
as a general rule. Naturally people
who have to write great quantities of
copy" for the press or for other pur-
poses find their hands, ii Roman and
fine at first, gradually disappearing in
scrawl due to fatigue. A number of
popular and prolific authors are suffer
ing from writers cramp." and their
hands must have been degenerating in
the progress Of the malady.
To do the work with the minimum Cf
fatigue is the authors object. and GER
tainly il seems as If the men and wom-
en- with the most slovenly hands suffer
least from writers cramp. Mr.. Jack
son, however, thinks that writing is
very bad, that its badness is due TO bad
teaching. promiscuously selected mod
els (he prefers examples on the black
board 10 headhnesj. and. above all. the
error is in sloping as opposed 10 pcrpen-
dicrilar or vertical writing. The nat
ural man, ne thinks. sits upright 10 has
work, and would write peTpeudicular-
ly bur for the prevalence OF slopins
copies. Prom these comes the habit Of
sprawling sideways at the desk. and
that habit is bad for the eyes, bad for
the spine, bad for discipline in school
las il facilitates tattliagl, and finally
bad for the handwriting. The slope
keeps on running down hill til II loses
itself in an indecipherable scrayvL
History proves. Mr. Jackson thinks,
that all writing was originally vertical
We do not see Egyptian hieroglyphs on
the slope: they are drawn upright. and
so are the more Ella borate pictures Of
the Aztec "schritt" of the Nayas ~
Eastern island, the Sauskrit hand, the
Pho nicisn WITNESS the hI0abi;e stone,
the Greek. whether on inscriptions on
stone, on vases. or in writing on papyri.
but not. we think. in the ltaiic hand
copied from the writing of MusuF1ls
in the editions Of Aldus The italic
hand Is on slope-ffteen hundred.
Mr Jackson says that al writing in
Europe was vertical, upright tia the
age of Elizabeth The Aidine texts IN
Italics seem 70 ar n suggest a doubt on I
this pOiut