Engravers Write Badly.

Otago Witness, Volume 25, Issue 2321, 25 August 1898, Page 60

Engravers Write Badly.

" People who know me and my profession." says a visiting-card engraver, "are usually j very much surprised to find such a startling ' contrast between my ordinary handwriting — ' a vile scrawl — and the beautiful characters and nourishes which constitute my daily I craftsmanship. One thing has nothing to do j with the other ; in fact, I may say, as the result of many years' experience, that most ! ongrayers write badly, and the belter their ' technical work, the worse (as a rule) their handwriting. " First of all, the tools used for etching or scratching the letters on the plute are very different in shape from pen 01 pencil, and are held at quite another angle, so that his daily toil accustoms the hand of the eu-

graver to a certain 'set,' aud makes tho use of the pen even harder to him than to most people. '" Another thing to be rememnered, too, is that the engraver works a word backwards, as it were, on the copper ; and so it is all the more difficult for him to shape hiss letters well when they are 1 mining in an adverse direction aud order. I can only compare tho sensation of writing to what an ordinary person would feel if he had to start a letter backwards from the end of tho signature, and work his way upwards towards the address."