Analysis of Some Factors Related to Manuscript Letter-Height Reduction

Abstract

18 beginning second graders, copying 23 lower case letters, reduced the height of the letters compared to that of sample letters. All letters were not equally reduced. Rather, letters composed of highly curved letter strokes were written relatively smaller. This differential size reduction might be attributed to letter difficulty, although another possible difficulty index, total stroke length, did not yield a reliable relationship. Another possibility is that the dotted topline of the writing space served as a functional size prompt only if the starting position of the letter was on or above the line. Significantly greater height reduction was found for letters beginning below the topline.