but the
funds at the disposal of this body could surely be put to no better use.

With regard to the improvement of legibility by alteration of form, it has
been recognized by experiments from the outset that the letters of our
alphabet, especially the small, or "lower-case" letters, are not equally
legible. Many proposals for modifying or changing them have been made,
some of them odd or repugnant. It has been suggested, for instance, that
the Greek lambda be substituted for our _l_, which in its present form is
easily confused with the dotted _i_. Other pairs of letters (_u_ and _n_,
_o_ and _e_, for example) are differentiated with difficulty. The
privilege of modifying alphabetic form is one that has been frequently
exercised. The origin of the German alphabet and our own, for instance, is
the same, and no lower-case letters in any form date further back than the
Middle Ages. There could be no well-founded objection to any change, in
the interests of legibility, that is not so far-reaching as to make the
whole alphabet look foreign and unfamiliar. It may be queried, however,
whether the lower-case alphabet had not better be reformed by abolishing
it altogether. There would appear to be no good reason for using two
alphabets, now one and now the other, according to arbitrary rules,
difficult to learn and hard to remember. That the general legibility of
books would benefit by doing away with this mediaeval excrescence appears
to admit of no doubt, although the proposal may seem somewhat startling to
the general reader.

In 1911, a committee was appointed by the British Association for the
Advancement of Science "to inquire into the influence of school-books upon
eyesight." This committee's report dwells on the fact that the child's eye
is still in process of development and needs larger type than the fully
developed eye of the adult. In making its recommendation for the
standardization of school-book type, which it considers the solution of
the difficulty, the committee emphasizes the fact that forms and sizes
most legible for isolated letters are not necessarily so for the groups
that need to be quickly recognized by the trained reader. It dwells upon
the importance of unglazed paper, flexible sewing, clear, bold
illustrations, black ink, and true alignment. Condensed or compressed
letters are condemned, as are long serifs and hair strokes. On the other
hand, very heavy-faced type is almost as objectionable as that