Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1882 — READING BAD PENMANSHIP. [ARTICLE]

READING BAD PENMANSHIP.

Stnpld Keaiier*, Not Bad Poamoa, Malaly at Faalt-Te Aaaljse the Great Thla« Needed. [London Spectator.] Anecdotes of ludicrous, or worse than ludicrous, mistakes occasioned by bad handwriting are numerous enough. Some of them are as obviously invented as Moore’s “ freshly blown noses,” for “freshly blown roses,” and others tell strongly of the stupidity of the readers. A small case of the stupid sort comes to us from Jersey. It is said that the Lieutenant-Governor, General Nickolson, in apologizing for his absence from a temperance meeting, referred to “ the needs of further restrictions on the sale of drink,” but that the last few words were read “in the Isle of Drink,” and that this led to “indignant protests on the part of certain citizens.” This is quoted as a “warning to those who will not take the trouble to write legibly,” but it is equally a warning to readers of handwriting to use what brains they may, happen to possess. All who have had much experience in the performances of printers and copyists know very well that, though misreadings are fewest when the original manuscript is good, some oi the most irritating blunders are extracted from the fairest “ copy ” —those, namely, which make a wretched, bastard sense, that perverts the meaning or enfeebles the style. The reason is obvious ; a less strenuous attention is paid to good handwriting than to bad. Even in “setting up” from plain print, strange mistakes are made; for instance, in setting up the last line of “Guinevere ” in a review of the “Idyls of the King,” the printers of the review, having the book before them, printed, “To where beyond these vices there is peace” for “voices.” Handwriting bears much blame that does not belong to it. Of course, a man’s vriting ought to be legible, but allowance must be made for idiosyncrasy, fatigue, or illness. A handwriting without peculiarities is a handwriting without landmarks or checks upon false reading ; and, as absolutely good writing is not to be looked for in the business of life, the dull school-boy hand, with no special character in it, is not without its dangers. The very worst manuscript may be made out by a reader who can and will analyze, but those who can and will analyze are few. Here, as elsewhere, there are not many who find a pleasure in taking trouble and applying obvious general rules. Take the subject of spelling, for instance. The rule which decides in certain words whether, when the sound is ee, the word shall be spelled ei or ie is so short and easy that any one who had no previous knowledge of human dullness would think it utterly impossible that a mistake should ever be made by a writer who had once cast his eye upon the rule; but what the fact is we have some of us melancholy reasons for knowing. Now, take the case of a badly written manuscript. You will find a whole group of people fumbling at a sentence, and making, as to one particular obscure word, guesses upon guesses, all of which are simply absurd. When it is demonstrably clear that the missing link must be an adverb, you may hear six sane men trying nouns or verbs. It 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 scores of false shots will be made because nobody has the brains or the will to say to himself, “ Whatever this word may be, we can positively determine what it is not, and so limit our range of guessing.” In making out bad manuscript it is more than half the battle to be able to determine at a glance what a word neither is nor can by any possibility be. There are here and there human beings who are by nature incapable of writing a good hand, just as there are others who can not draw a straight line or a true circle, or even recognize one. But the ugly manuscript of the clumsy - fisted struggler after form is usually very clear. Haste, uneasiness, excessive work, nervous preoccupation—these are the chief causes of obscure handwriting 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 and getting his eyes put straight the lady could no longer meet his eye in the old affectionate way, and she dismissed him. Still, there ore faults of handwriting which are inexcusable in themselves, and which neither compositor nor copyist can possibly like to see. One of the worst of these is lax practice in putting the strokes to such letters as m and n. There is no harm in cutting down certain syllables, such as ment and ing to mere lines or twirls, but where an attempt is made to express the characters the number of strokes ought to be uniform. Another practical observation is that flurried 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 self-assertion or disregard of the eyes and wits of others.