Manuscript writing is not, as is generally supposed, a new type of simplified handwriting. Nor is it necessarily a crutch to be taken up and laid aside in the acquiring of a legible cursive hand. Manuscript writ ing is a revival of the original handwriting from which all present print and handwriting forms have evolved. To add to its significance it has a precedent of centuries of legible and beautiful handwriting preserved from the past. The Carolingian writing of the eighth century, and the fifteenth and sixteenth century manuscripts of the Italian Rennaissance are the particular models which have been found most practical upon which to base a simple rapid and legible handwriting for present day use. Our present cursive writing has been termed a deterioration of the original handwriting through the invention of the copperplate, which was the only means known at the time of the revival of learning to make sufficient copybooks to supply all who wished to learn to write. The engraver could manipulate the finely pointed tool with greater ease by not lifting it from the plate throughout a word, thus departing from the clear separate forms of the original letters and creating the joining strokes and loops of cursive writing. Though all of the fine unnecessary loops and flourishes to which copperplate engraving lent itself have since been discarded, all subsequent reforms in cursive writing have been in the direction of simplifying and adapting copperplate writing rather than in a return to the basic principles upon which natural writing by hand was originally developed. Whether or not this course is to be lamented, certain it is that the characteristics of many individual letters are impaired through the joinings, and it is common knowledge that in rapid cursive writing the distinguisliableness of entire letters is often completely lost. The chief recommendations of manuscript writing are its legibility, beauty, and the ease with which it is acquired. Other points advanced in favor of manuscript are : (1) young children can produce better results ; (2) manuscript causes the beginner less fatigue; (3) it eliminates the learning of a separate alphabet for reading and writing; and (4) chil dren with poor muscular control can produce readable results. These 115