most of all, stands at the very foot of the list in the
distance group. Could there be any clearer call for the reform of our
letters?

Mr. Sanford enters at length into the question of the points that help
and hinder legibility and that should therefore be considered in
reforming the shapes of letters. Enlargement of size and increase of
differences are obvious aids to clearness. Simplicity of outline and
concentration of peculiarity upon one feature are important elements of
legibility. Even a letter of small size, like v, is brought into the
first group by a combination of these two qualities. Serifs are
necessary to prevent irradiation, or an overflowing of the white on the
black, but they should be stubby; if long, they take on the character of
ornament and become confusing. The letters g and a are complicated
without being distinctive and are therefore continually confused with
other letters. The c e o group of much used letters can be made less
liable to confusion if the gap on the right of the first two letters is
made wider and the line of the e slants downward as in Jenson. Another
group, a n u, are confused together. To avoid this the top and bottom
openings of n and u should be made as open as possible and the a should
go back to the old script form =a= as in the Humanistic type. The letter s
is a source of great difficulty, being either not recognized at all in
the tests or confused with other letters. It will be remembered that
Franklin greatly deprecated the giving up of the long f, and a return to
this form is now suggested, care being taken, of course, to
differentiate it from f, especially by carrying it below the line. The
dot of the i is of no use when the letter stands alone, but it is an
important element of distinctness in words like "minim." The dot, as Dr.
Javal suggests, should be set on a level with the top of the l rather
than on a level with the top of the t. A reduction of serifs would
lessen the confusion of x and z and of s and z.

But it is unnecessary to trace these studies in all their minutiae. In
the twenty-eight years that have followed the appearance of Mr.
Sanford's article work along the same lines has been done by many
investigators in various countries. Some of the conclusions that we have
noticed have been sustained, others have been discredited. The most
important conclusions of the investigators down to 1908 will be found
scattered through the pages of Huey's "Psychology a