Nearly monotone spline approximation in

It is shown that the rate of -approximation of a non-decreasing function in , , by ``nearly non-decreasing" splines can be estimated in terms of the third classical modulus of smoothness (for uniformly spaced knots) and third Ditzian-Totik modulus (for Chebyshev knots), and that estimates in terms of higher moduli are impossible. It is known that these estimates are no longer true for ``purely" monotone spline approximation, and properties of intervals where the monotonicity restriction can be relaxed in order to achieve better approximation rate are investigated.