be well to confine the phrasing to simple, common, everyday expressions consisting of not more than five strokes.
How to Practice Phrases.—Phrases, like wordsigns, are useful only if thoroughly mastered. The phrases illustrated in the Eleventh Lesson are among the most common phrases of the language, and the student should devote sufficient practice to them to be able to execute them with great rapidity and accuracy. A point to be remembered in executing phrases is that ultimately a phrase is one compact thing. Think of it as one word and it will be executed in that way. There should be no stop at the joinings. By thinking of each word separately there will be a tendency to stop at the end of each word, and facility in execution will thus be lost, but it is necessary while learning the long phrases to separate them into smaller units. If difficulty is experienced in executing some of the phrases consisting of several strokes, practice a part of the phrase at a time until the difficulties of that part have been removed. Then add a little more to it and so on until the whole phrase can be written without a perceptible stop. The following illustrations will make this clear:
| you will be sorry to learn | you will not be able |
| ? | ? |
| I would like to see | I have not been able |
| ? | ? |
