The Palmer Method of Business Writing / A Series of Self-teaching in Rapid, Plain, Unshaded, Coarse-pen, Muscular Movement Writing for Use in All Schools, Public or Private, Where an Easy and Legible Handwriting is the Object Sought; Also for the Home Learner

by A. N. Palmer

The first step is a correct understanding of the required position. Study the pictures on pages twelve, fourteen, and fifteen, of a pupil who has learned how to sit so as to use the large tireless muscles of his arms to the best possible advantage. Study every little detail of these pictures from the crown of the head to the shoes. Study particularly and closely the arms, the relation of one arm to the other, the position at the desk, the distance of the body from the desk, and the positions of the fingers preparatory to taking the penholder.

As progress is made in the more advanced lessons, you should refer frequently to these pictures and try to sit as this pupil sat when his photographs were taken for the Palmer Method. When writing, he always sits as shown in these photographs, and he knows that it would be physically impossible to use muscular movement writing in a cramped, unhealthful position.

There is an old saying, “Practice makes perfect.” That is only partly true in relation to writing. Practice of the right kind leads toward perfection, but the wrong kind of practice leads just as surely in the opposite direction. It is not so much the exercise that is practiced as the manner in which it is practiced. Millions of pupils have wasted the time given to movement exercises because they thought it was the exercise that counted and not the manner in which it was made.

There is no value in any penmanship drill ever invented unless it is practiced with correct positions of body, arms, fingers, penholders, paper, and with exactly the right movement, and at exactly the right rate of speed.

If you study the instructions in the Palmer Method, and follow them absolutely in daily practice, you will make steady progress and, within a short time, become a splendid penman. But, even should you spend a great deal of time practicing the drills in a poor position with cramped muscles and with the wrong movement, you not only will make no progress toward good writing, but will contract bad habits, or firmly fix those already established, and, under such conditions, the possibility of learning to write well will constantly become more and more remote.

It is a fact, that among the thousands of men and women employed in business offices who do longhand writing constantly, rapidly, and well, none can be found who do not use muscular movement, because it is the only movement through which penmanship embracing in the highest degree legibility, rapidity, ease, and endurance can be developed.

It is now generally conceded that systems of copy-books have inevitably resulted in a poor finished product of penmanship. Public school officials and teachers were satisfied with copy-books so long as they did not consider good posture, muscular relaxation, easy, tireless movement and reasonable speed, as important factors. Then the discovery was made that pupils were able to draw the letters slowly and very accurately in close imitation of mechanically engraved copies, but that when rapid, continuous writing was required in the penmanship employed in written spelling, compositions, examinations, etc., the letter forms became dissipated in appearance and soon approached the stage of scribbling.

It must be conceded by everyone that any system of writing which does not lead to an automatic style embodying legibility, rapidity, ease, and endurance is a failure.

The term “Copy-book” has been applied for many years to sheets of paper bound together with a cover, containing at the top of each page, a line of writing or an exercise to be imitated by the pupils on the lines below. Sometimes the headlines are made from carefully penciled copies, mechanically perfected through a system of hand engraving.

There are also bound books, with copies at the top of the pages that were really written with some show of muscular movement and afterward photo-engraved, but the copy-book principles are involved in the publication of such books—principles which preclude the teaching of good writing through their use. The mental attitude of pupils who see before them the immaculate page upon which they must make reproductions, as nearly facsimile as possible of the copies at the top, is wholly unfavorable to the process.