While Edison's style remains unacknowledged as a vertical style in books on the history of penmanship, it clearly is upright, unlike the style of the time. However, it is fair to say that he neither authored a book on penmanship nor taught it in any institutions, and so he cannot be seen as among those who influenced the nation's youth nor its clerks. His style was imitated by other telegraph clerks, though, and news of his efforts also reach Melvil Dewey, who is perhaps inspired by Edison and then later introduces "library hand," itself a vertical style, as the official style to be used by all librarians.

However, likely neither Edison nor Dewey would have probably approved of the evolution of their vertical script ideals. In many writers, vertical script evolves into a backhand style. Here is a library card written for a gift received in 1909. This particular script has the worst qualities of being somewhat ornate, which Edison had avoided; it is also not in Dewey's prescribed style. And of course, it is harder to read since it is both slanted, and slanted backwards. Oh, progress!