The pupil's writing of figures should be clear. He will thereby be saved eyestrain and errors in his school work as well as given a valuable ability for life. Handwriting of figures is used enormously in spite of the development of typewriters; illegible figures are commonly more harmful than illegible letters or words, since the context far less often tells what the figure is intended to be; the habit of making clear figures is not so hard to acquire, since they are written unjoined and require only the automatic action of ten minor acts of skill. The schools have missed a great opportunity in this respect. Whereas the hand writing of words is often better than it needs to be for life's purposes, the writing of figures is usually much worse. The figures presented in books on penmanship are also commonly bad, showing neglect or misunderstanding of the matter on the part of leaders in penmanship. _Spacing._--Spacing up and down the column is rarely too wide, but very often too narrow. The specimens shown in Figs. 36 and 37 show good practice contrasted with the common fault. Spacing from right to left is generally fairly satisfactory in books, though there is a bad tendency to adopt some one routine throughout and so to miss chances to use reductions and increases of spacing so as to help the eye and the mind in special cases. Specimens of good and bad spacing are shown in Figs. 38 and 39. In the work of the pupils, the spacing from right to left is often too narrow. This crowding of letters, together with unevenness of spacing, adds notably to the task of eye and mind. _The composition or make-up of the page._--Other things being equal, that arrangement of the page is best which helps a child most to keep his place on a page and to find it after having looked away to work on the paper on which he computes, or for other good reasons. A good page and a bad page in this respect are shown in Figs. 40 and 41. [Illustration: FIG. 40.--A page well made up to suit the action of the eye.] [Illustration: FIG. 41.--The same matter as in Fig. 40, much less well made up.] _Objective presentations._--Pictures, diagrams, maps, and other presentations should not tax the eye unduly, (_a_) by requiring too fine distinctions, or (_b_) by inconvenient arrangement of the data, preventing easy counting, measuring, comparison, or whatever the task is, or (_c_) by putting too many facts in one picture so that the eye and mind, when trying to make out any one, are confused by the others. Illustrations of bad practices in these respects are shown in Figs. 42 to 52. A few specimens of work well arranged for the eye are shown in Figs. 53 to 56. Good rules to remember are:--