s
arbitrarily defined as that of a handwriting, recognizable as such, but
yet not legible at all and possessed of no beauty.

[Illustration: qual0.png: ]

Quality 4.

[Illustration: qual4.png: ]

Quality 5.

[Illustration: qual5.png: ]

Quality 6.

[Illustration: qual6.png: ]

Quality 7.

[Illustration: qual7.png: ]

Quality 8.

[Illustration: qual8a.png: ]

[Illustration: qual8b.png: ]

Quality 9.

[Illustration: qual9a.png: ]

[Illustration: qual9b.png: ]

[Illustration: qual9c.png: ]

Quality 10.

[Illustration: qual10.png: ]

Quality 11.

[Illustration: qual11a.png: ]

[Illustration: qual11b.png: ]

[Illustration: qual11c.png: ]

Quality 12.

[Illustration: qual12a.png: ]

[Illustration: qual12b.png: ]

[Illustration: qual12c.png: ]

Quality 13.

[Illustration: qual13a.png: ]

[Illustration: qual13b.png: ]

[Illustration: qual13c.png: ]

[Illustration: qual13d.png: ]

Quality 14.

[Illustration: qual14a.png: ]

[Illustration: qual14b.png: ]

Quality 15.

[Illustration: qual15a.png: ]

[Illustration: qual15b.png: ]

[Illustration: qual15c.png: ]

[Illustration: qual15d.png: ]

Quality 16.

[Illustration: qual16a.png: ]

Quality 17.

[Illustration: qual17.png: ]

Quality 18.

[Illustration: qual18.png: ]

* * * * *

This table reads as follows: Quality four was written by five children
in the second grade and two in the third grade, quality five was written
by twenty-two children in the second grade, two children in the third
grade, three in the fourth grade, three in the fifth grade, none in the
sixth grade, one in the seventh grade, and none in the eighth grade, and
so on for the whole table.[24]

A scale for measuring ability in spelling prepared by Dr. Leonard P.
Ayres arranges the thousand words most commonly used in the order of
their difficulty. From this sheet it is possible to discover words of
approximately the same difficulty for each grade. A test could therefore
be derived from this scale for each of the grades with the expectation
that they would all do about equally well. There would also be the
possibility of determining how well the spelling was done in the
particular school system in which these words were given as compared
with the ability of children as measured by an aggregate of more than a
million spellings by seventy thousand children in eighty-four cities
thr