Handwriting

I have crum­my hand­writ­ing. It isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly illeg­i­ble, it just lacks char­ac­ter. I’ve not writ­ten in cur­sive [apart from my sig­na­ture] since 3rd grade, when we stopped get­ting grad­ed on it. I’ve print­ed ever since, and to this day there is still some­thing rather juve­nile about the way my words appear on paper.

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I think graphol­o­gy is pseu­do­science for the most part, but I do feel that some infor­ma­tion can be gleaned from the exam­i­na­tion of hand­writ­ing. So while graphol­o­gy is bunk, foren­sic doc­u­ment exam­i­na­tion I’ll buy.

I think the lim­its of foren­sic doc­u­ment exam­i­na­tion only per­mit peo­ple to deter­mine whether or not some­thing was writ­ten by a par­tic­u­lar per­son. My writ­ing is all over the place, thank­ful­ly not as bad as Char­lie Brown, my let­ters don’t have a par­tic­u­lar slant right or left, the space between let­ters and words varies, the size of let­ters varies, noth­ing is very con­sis­tent. So in order for some­one to forge some­thing pre­tend­ing to be me, they’d prob­a­bly have to prac­tice quite a bit.

Grapho­log­i­cal­ly speak­ing [quack quack]:

1) In gen­er­al inter­prta­tion of writ­ing it may be said that the left direc­tion is inter­pret­ed as the direc­tion towards the moth­er as well as the past. Left slant writ­ing is seen more often in women than in men. We often see left slant in peo­ple who have a dis­turbed bal­ance in the paran­tel equi­lib­ri­um. Writ­ers with left slant are gen­er­al­ly much clos­er to their moth­ers. The upright slant is found in peo­ple who are very inde­pen­dant in life. They tend to have no incli­na­tion to either the moth­er or father. Whol­ly upright hands are very rare. In fact this may only be achieved by a show of dis­ci­pline. The right slant is the most com­mon and and most nat­ur­al slant. The right slant is found in peo­ple in a hur­ry, impa­tient peo­ple and the active writer.

2) Some­times writ­ers words are wide­ly spaced and at oth­er times nar­row­ly spaced. We may say that this writer is unsta­ble in both think­ing and emo­tions. When most let­ters are uncon­nect­ed it shows a per­son who is an ego­cen­tric. Lack of end strokes indi­cates a shy per­son. When the first let­ter stands apart it shows a cau­tious per­son.

3) The size of a let­ter is indica­tive of the writ­ers self reliance. A let­ter may extend in four direc­tions, up, down, right or left. A let­ter may also be tall and wide. Tall cap­i­tals are peo­ple who tow­er above the rest. Tall ini­tials come from impres­sive peo­ple. Small cap­i­tals are peo­ple who are mod­est in nature. They con­cen­trate on facts, not ideas. Wide let­ters are extro­vert­ed peo­ple. Nar­row let­ters come from lon­ers.

7 thoughts on “Handwriting”

  1. With the use of e‑mail over actu­al let­ters, my writ­ing, once com­ment­ed as being “girl hand­writ­ing” (orga­nized, tight and leg­i­ble), has devolved in some sort of 3rd grade scrawl. I get embarassed when I have to write things out to peo­ple ’cause it looks like some lit­tle kid wrote it.

    My cur­sive is even worse.

  2. You haven’t seen bad hand­writ­ing until you see mine. I was told ear­ly on that I was going to be a Doc­tor. I learned how to type when I was in 4th grade because my hand­writ­ing was so bad. Bot­tom line is that I can read it. So now my hand­writ­ing is like cod­ed mes­sages to myself. Any­time I leave a hand­writ­ten note that I need some­body else to read, I take extra time to write it and it looks like a 3 year old wrote it, but at least you can read it. (sort of). My cur­sive quick­ly turns into lines on a page that even I can’t read. How­ev­er, if I take my time and write slow­ly, my cur­sive is actu­al­ly quite leg­i­ble, I just have no use for it.

    Cur­sive is near­ly as dead as Latin these days. Who needs to use it for any­thing oth­er than a sig­na­ture these days? Print does a bet­ter job of look­ing a bit like text/type so why both­er?

  3. i like writ­ing cur­sive still. it has more of a flow to it. i actu­al­ly wrote most of my papers in col­lege long­hand b/c the writ­ing flow was bet­ter, but now i can type much faster than i write.

    there’s some­thing about hand­writ­ing. it’s per­son­al, even if it sucks. and there’s some­thing about putting actu­al pen/pencil to paper.

  4. I still write let­ters to a few peo­ple, gives me an excuse to use my foun­tain pen, and I know that I love receiv­ing mail like that. A friend of mine who writes back often has tiny cur­sive hand­writ­ing that is almost impos­si­ble to read. I have to pick words out and then assem­ble mean­ings of the oth­ers through con­text. After two or three read throughs I can usu­al­ly deci­pher it all.

  5. I had a teacher in art school who insist­ed there was no dif­fer­ence between boys’ and girls’ hand­writ­ing, and that there was no way to tell whether some­thing was writ­ten by a male or female. I think his larg­er point was that we decide our­selves what marks we make, and we real­ly can “design” our own iden­ti­ties in that way regard­less of gen­der… but his ini­tial argu­ment seems sil­ly. I agree that you can’t con­clu­sive­ly tell gen­der based on hand­writ­ing, but there are cer­tain traits that are more com­mon to girls’ hand­writ­ing, and vice ver­sa.

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