Excerpt from Handwriting

Handwriting may profitably be studied from three points of view: that of the physiology and psychology of movement, that of the part it may play in the intelligently directed activities of child life in schools, - and that of the direct examination of the quality and speed of handwriting secured by various forms of school training. But to any study of it there is one very desirable preliminary some means of measuring the quality of a sample of handwriting.

At present we can do no better than estimate a handwriting as very bad, bad, good, very good, or extremely good, knowing only vaguely what we mean thereby, running the risk of shifting our standards with time, and only by chance meaning the same by a word as some other student of the facts means by it. We are in the condition in which students of temperature were before the discovery of the thermometer or any other scale for measuring temperature beyond the very hot, hot, warm, lukewarm, and the like, of subjective opinion. We opine roughly that, at a fairly rapid rate, writing-movements in which the forearm shares will produce a better quality of handwriting than movements confined more exclusively to the thumb and fingers, but no one could estimate with surety and precision hozu much better the best rapid free-arm writing is than the best equally rapid finger-movement writing. We opine roughly that drills in which good writing serves some end of consequence to the No attempt is made in this article to report any results of physiological or psychological analysis of the behavior involved in handwriting. The student of this aspect of the subject should consult especially the investigations of Preyer. Judd and Freeman. No attempt is made in this article to report the experiences or opinions of students of education with respect to the utilization of the original tendencies of children so as to secure a rational and economical cultivation of handwriting as an expressive art.

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