Dewey's version of disjoined hand seems much more like a typeface to be used by a typewriter or a printer than a style to be written by hand. While catalog cards are not commonly written in this fashion, one can find examples that are similar.
In this first example, from Columbia University, where Dewey was himself the
Chief Librarian beginning in 1883 (and one can assume that others followed his rules), it is fair to assume that the writer of this card attempts to write in Dewey's recommended disjoined hand, though there are some puzzling variations in some letters.
Less convincingly an example of Dewey's disjoined hand is this example.
It is hard to know if the person doing the work on this example from Houghton was following the recommendations or not, because such lettering is ubiquitous. Yet is it possible that this is in fact a better copy of Dewey's example, excepting its slight right slope? Any empirical attempt to prove that this particular card can be traced back to Dewey's guiding principles is eroded by additional cards from the same collection. What does it tell us then, that neither of these other cards is in proper library hand? Are one or more from a time before the writing was regularized, or were these librarians untrained, or simply exhibiting the writing style of the time?
Regarding Dewey, and his own journey, one can look to the 1898 edition of
Simplified library school rules; card catalog, accession, book numbers, shelf list, capitals, punctuation, abbreviations, library handwriting, and see there are other new letterforms and examples for librarians of both a joined hand and a disjoined hand, or, as he spelled it with simplified spelling, "joind hand" and "disjoind hand." (This simplified version and its examples was also reprinted in
1904 and
1912.) Dewey further divides writing into the regular and "alternativ" forms. Here, we see joind hand sentences with different letterforms.
Dewey also provides a new set of letterforms for disjoind hand.
In the 1898 edition, Dewey also provides an example of what a card written in library hand should look like. This, like the other material from the Simplified library school rules book was also reprinted in 1904 and 1912.
This card, from the
Providence Athenaeum in Providence, Rhode Island, has writing that appears to span the years before and after the introduction of library hand. One sees what looks like an accession date of April 9, 1888, a Spencerian script with varying width of stroke both up and down as well as the "ornament" and "flourish" Dewey mentioned as impediments to the public's ease of reading, erasure, and numerals added in the place of the erasure--interestingly, from the Dewey Decimal Classification System--that are in a library hand style.
And in this, another sample from Providence Athenaeum, one sees a card that appears to be written all at the same time. Without an accession date, it has both a library hand-like vertical style as well as the Dewey Decimal Classification System numbers. While there are many discrepancies in the letterforms between this sample and those prescribed by library hand, the capital, or majiscule letter "L" and the miniscules "d," "h," "l," and "s" stand out as good imitations of the sample provided to librarians. Interestingly, roughly half the letters are not joined, while the others are not. This kind of mixed style, while common in the later part of the twentieth century and in the twenty-first, was unusual at the time this was likely written. Here, one seems to see a mix of printing and script as a result of the two sets of letterforms. In keeping with the recommendations made to librarians, here one sees the use of a broader pen with an even stroke.
Of special note is the use of the majiscule form of the letter, but in miniscule, the large letter used in a small form. What does this mean? Likely, a third style of script mixed with the other two? Perhaps. The form of the letter "e" seems to begin many years before even Spencer; it can be found in Spencerian copy-books; one can find it in
Riderian penmanship, though not well known, and probably many others; Bloser used it in a
letter from 1885 after the miniscules "b," "v," "w," and he even uses it as a double "ee," as one can see; and strangely, it persists well past Palmer in the writing of some people. It is a bit of a wild card, but it is not part of the set of letterforms designated as library hand, though Dewey himself employed it in his personal writing.
Cutter's classification system was also employed in nearby
Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island. Interestingly, for this example seen below, one could say that the handwriting of the librarian, Sarah Bliss, who was born in 1839, likely learned Spencerian or another writing style first, and combined it an library hand with it. Was she unable to properly follow the guidelines of Dewey, if in fact she saw the letterforms? Was she writing in a vertical style of the 1890's, and not in library hand? One could say in general that the majiscules are more Spencerian and the miniscules are mostly library hand. (A letter by letter analysis may follow in a later version of this article.) As is the case with some other librarians, she seems to have, for the most part, blended the Spencerian style of her childhood and adulthood with library hand into what might be called a Spencerian-Dewey library hand. Interestingly, in what one might assume are cards written later, as seen on the
Redwood Library's blog post, she uses a style more in keeping with Dewey's library handwriting.
These are but only a few of the variations of library cards of these years, for in a sample of a handful of cards the variations seem to only multiply.
To anyone who might reference the use of library hand, you could consider asking them, "To what year and to what style, joined or disjoined hand, do you refer?" Have you looked at a number of
images of library cards, and do you think they are in library hand, or not? What letters are the same as library hand, and which differ? Which mix one of more style of writing together, and how do we describe these, as as being in what style?
Dewey is both part of the solution in creating a set of letterforms, but he is also part of the problem. As noted earlier, his first set of letterforms appears in 1887, only to have revisions in the same year. The simplified form and its variations is printed in 1898, 1904, and 1912. And there are printings in 1901, 1903, and 1916, some the same, some different.
Apart from Dewey's work with library hand, the larger, national trend of using vertical penmanship reversed itself after roughly 1904, though some states like Utah were using it as late as 1914. In general, though most school systems and people abandoned the vertical style and returned to a forward slanted script--either by employing the older Spencerian script or a newer Spencerian "practical penmanship," one of the many of the assorted "practical styles," the Palmer method, or another.
It is likely that neither Edison, Jackson, nor Dewey would have probably approved of the evolution of their vertical script ideals in the years after their innovations. For many writers, vertical script evolves into an awkward and difficult to read backhand style. One of the greatest penmen ever to explore with devilish humor the limits of legibility of backhand was
Francis B. Courtney.
Below is a library card written in approximately 1909. This particular script is less legible since it is somewhat ornate; it is also not in Dewey's prescribed style. Is this a librarian who did not follow the rules? A person who learned vertical penmanship in the era from 1894 -1904, and whose writing had simply deteriorated like that of others? While not overly poor, it is not what any of these earlier promoters of vertical writing had identified as ideal.
Through these examples, the evolution of writing appears somewhat regressive or circuitous. One must contemplate how a forward slanted script's angle could be nullified by the vertical and then reversed into a backhand. And how is it that such efforts for efficiency and legibility and reform could have brought about these unintended results? Is the librarian writing this script the problem, or is library hand itself poorly designed and therefore prone to become harder to write as one gets older?
Here, one can see a comparison of library handwriting in the years 1887 - 1916. (Additional samples including 1901 and 1903 will be included shortly.)
All of this effort to find a rapid form of writing that was easy to read and that served both businesses and schools saw Palmer and even what was branded as Spencerian "practical writing" emerge from the end of the 1800s and into the early 1900s. In these decades, many different penman and their publishers printed copybooks and manuals with new writing styles.