The Dalles daily chronicle. [volume] (The Dalles, Or.) 1890-1948, 1893-05-19
ABOUT HANDWRITING.
An Expert Declares That It Ie
Degenerating.
The Chirography OF Writers for the
Press Growing Worse ON Account
of Hurry and Fatigue-Faults
OF Teaching

Is it true that handwriting is growing
worse and worse all the world over?
This is the statement of Mr.. jackson in
his ''Theory and Practice of Hand
writing" Official reports, says the
London News, seem to confirm Mr..
Jackson'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 rule, the
manuscripts of novels and of examina-
ton papers are legible and even rather
pleasing. The exceptions are scarcely
four per cent. in examination papers; In
novels an author foolishly sends in
mere rough draft, with erasions and ad-
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 and of
other people without aspirations to cul-
ture are often penned in excellent and
characteristic hands, and, on the whole,
we do not think that the age writes i'll,
as general rule. Naturally people
who have to write great quantities OF
copy for the press or for other pur-
poses find their hands, if 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
1 the progress of the malady.
To do the work with the minimum of
| fatigue is the authors object, and GER
| tainly it seems as if the men and wom-
| en- with the most slovenly hands suffer
least from writer's cramp. Mr.. Jack
son. however, thinks that writing is
very bad, that its badness is due to bad
| teaching, promiscuously selected mod
els Che prefers examples on the black
board to headlines), and, above all, the
error is in sloping as opposed to perpen-
dicular or vertical writing. The nat
ural man, he thinks, sits upright to his
! work, and would write perpendicular
ly but for the prevalence of sloping
copies. From 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
(as it facilitates tattling), and finally
bad for the handwriting. The slope
keeps on running down hill till it loses
itself in an indecipherable scrawl
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 elaborate pictures OF
the Aztec ''schritt'' of the Mayas OF
Eastern island, the Sansl1rit hand. the
Phenician (witness the Moabite stone),
the Greek, whether on inscriptions on
stone, on vases, or in writing on papyri
but not. we think, in the Italic hand
copied from the writing of Musurus
in the editions of AIdus. The ItaliC
hand is on slope-ffteen hundred
Mr.. jackson says that all writing il
Europe was vertical, upright, till the
age of Elizabeth. The Aldine texts il
Italics seem to us to suggest a doubt OF
this point.