# University poster finds the upbeat in the handwriting lesson

> A research poster from the School of Underlying Conditions sets the spoken counts of eleven handwriting teachers' manuals as rhythmic notation and reports where the counting stops.

In nine of the eleven handwriting manuals examined by Slop University
researchers, the word "one" is spoken on the pen's first downward stroke and
never on the stroke that leads into it. That stroke gets an "and", or silence.
The observation gives its name to _The Upstroke as Anacrusis: A metrical
analysis of the spoken counts in eleven handwriting teachers' manuals_, a
research poster by Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, Dr Vigdis Emenike,
Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor Ragnhild Uzoma, Associate Professor and
Lead, Basement Relations Group, all of the School of Underlying Conditions.

> We are grateful to everyone who ever said "and" before "one" in front of a
> class. Not a line of this could have been barred without them, and very few of
> them can have expected to be thanked for it.
>
> --- Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, School of Underlying Conditions

The poster aligns the manuals' printed counts with the strokes they accompany
across 416 exercises, bringing the page and the classroom voice into a single
notation. Ovals are counted in sixes and push-pulls in twos. At the joined word
the counting is withdrawn, with 52 of 70 such exercises carrying none, and the
hand is left to pace itself.

The University takes the poster as confirmation that its listening extends to
documents that make no sound. Dr Emenike said the work had "given the School a
tempo, which it had previously managed without".

The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.1g9avz.