BAD HANDWRITING.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2632, 13 September 1882, Page 3

BAD HANDWRITING.

{“ Spectator.”)

Thera are hero and there human beings who are by natore incapable of writing a gocd hand, just as there are others who cannot draw a straight line or a true circle, or even recognise one. But the ugly manuscript of the clumsy fisted struggler after form la usually very clear. Haste, uneasiness, excessive work, nervous preoccupation —these are the chief causes of obscure bandvi riting with most of us. But when a man’s manuscript has once made for itself a fixed character of its own, neither printers nor expert copyists would like it to come round to tame simplicity and correctness. It would be, in another way, the case of the lover with a squint, who ruined his suit by going to the oculist aud get his eyes put straight. The lady could no longer meet his eye in the old, affectionate way, and she dismissed him. Still, there are fault] of handwriting which are inexcusable in themselves, and which nsithor compositor nor copyist can possibly like to see. One of the worst of these is the lax practice in putting the strokes to such letters as m and n. Thsra is no harm in cutting down certain syllables, such as ment and ing, to mere lines or twirls; hut where an attempt is made to express the characters, the number of strokes ought to bo uniform. Another practical observation is that ilurrled handwriting gains no time for the writer. A downright lazy scrawl is another matter and so is that kind of bad writing in which we can see in the badness egotistic seif assertion or disregard of the eyes and wits of others. It may be laid down that there is much egotism (associated, it may be, with kindness) in the man who writes a bad hand, which never strives to pick itself up. But, of course, the rule must be applied with greater or less stringency, according to the amount of workll hat presses on the producer of the manuscript, his health, his preoccupation, and the activity of his self-oonaclousness.