Handwriting Analysis & Graphology

[EnolaGaia]

First, a side note ...

Handwriting analysis for identifying a person or authenticating a document (i.e., limited in scope to evaluating relationship between a sample and a specific individual) is distinct from 'graphology' as an approach to divining anything beyond identification. I've seen the label 'graphology' mis-applied to this limited sort of analysis.

I generally accept analysis for identification / authentication, but there's a point beyond which I question its reliability. Having said that ...

I never put much stock in the alleged ability to tell much about the writer from the written script. The main reason is that I had to grapple with adapting my left-handed writing to match the style expected of the right-handed majority, so it was obvious during my initial learning phase that adjustments in writing posture / paper alignment / etc. could alter the resulting script with respect to features (e.g., slope / slant) some graphology systems deem significant.

My own handwriting has mutated dramatically since childhood, and this is another reason I no longer entertain putting any trust in graphology.

More generally ... Handwriting has become such an infrequent activity that I find myself struggling to do it in a natural / fluid manner after a long lapse.

Most of my manual writing over the last 2 decades has been on whiteboards - sometimes filling multiple boards over a period of hours. I print, owing to the need for legibility to an audience and my prior experience as a draftsman. I've adapted to printing with the fluidity previously associated with writing script.

I mention this practice effect because it induces variations in script that some graphologists might consider suggestive, if not significant.

 

[CarlosTheDJ]

I used to have great handwriting, but after spending the last twenty years typing everything I now have the writing of a child.

Read into that what you will.

 

[ramonmercado]

I used to have great handwriting, but after spending the last twenty years typing everything I now have the writing of a child.

Read into that what you will.

I always had bad handwriting but now I can blame it on decades of typing!

 

[Coal]

Handwriting analysis for identifying a person or authenticating a document (i.e., limited in scope to evaluating relationship between a sample and a specific individual) is distinct from 'graphology' as an approach to divining anything beyond identification. I've seen the label 'graphology' mis-applied to this limited sort of analysis.

Good point.

 

[Victory]

On instinct, I think there is some truth to graphology.
Having seen some handwriting of serial killers etc in newspapers, assuming it is genuine, there appears to be a sharp almost violent impression left by the pen strokes.

But...when someone has analysed my handwriting, I always think that my handwriting was surely considerably influenced by how I was taught to write at primary school ages 3 - 7?

We had notebooks with horizontal lines, and had to copy printed examples onto lines below.
We were actively taught how to hold a pen and how to move our hands to produce the letters.

So what of a child in another country who was taught a different technique?

And how different is handwriting education now from what was taught 20, 30, 40 years ago?

 

[EnolaGaia]

... And how different is handwriting education now from what was taught 20, 30, 40 years ago?

Excellent question.

My initial education in writing dates back 60-some years, and I have little doubt whatever's done nowadays bears little resemblance to my own childhood experience.

 

[EnolaGaia]

On instinct, I think there is some truth to graphology.
Having seen some handwriting of serial killers etc in newspapers, assuming it is genuine, there appears to be a sharp almost violent impression left by the pen strokes. ...

This provides a good example for illustrating a point ...

Graphological analyses often focus on such stroke styles and other physical features of the resulting script. My experience has been that some of these stylistic factors can shift in response to circumstances as transient as emotional state (e.g., aggressive or exaggerated strokes in signing something when angry).

This sort of situational variation, combined with observed long-term variability, makes me wonder how reliable graphology could be.

Do the sharp / violent impressions you cite represent a symptom of a persistently violent personality, or do they represent no more than emotional / psychological duress at the particular time the sample was written?

More generally ... How broad and / or how voluminous does a handwriting sample have to be before it could be reasonably construed as evidence of innate and persistent personal characteristics?

 

[INT21]

My handwriting, always atrocious, became even worst when I was a radio operator taking down Morse code.

For those who have never done this, you tend not to look at the words you are writing as you mentally decode the incoming 'dits and dahs'. and you don't read the message until it is complete. Otherwise you may miss some of it.

Some people can do these things at the same time, but it takes a lot of practice.

Now I type almost everything. I can type much faster and, of course, far more legibly than I can write longhand.

INT21

K

 

[Coal]

On instinct, I think there is some truth to graphology.
Having seen some handwriting of serial killers etc in newspapers, assuming it is genuine, there appears to be a sharp almost violent impression left by the pen strokes.

Such articles don't tend to employ control conditions - they rely on post-hoc analysis, once the perpetrator is known. Quite a lot of 'human lie detectors' use this technique to boost their reputations.

It's easy to label some tic as an indicator of lying, when you know the statement was a lie already. The same is true of striking writing of someone already identified. What about all the folk with 'odd' handwriting who never hurt a fly?

The language used however, is a different kettle of herring.

Graphological analyses often focus on such stroke styles and other physical features of the resulting script. My experience has been that some of these stylistic factors can shift in response to circumstances as transient as emotional state (e.g., aggressive or exaggerated strokes in signing something when angry).

This sort of situational variation, combined with observed long-term variability, makes me wonder how reliable graphology could be.

Do the sharp / violent impressions you cite represent a symptom of a persistently violent personality, or do they represent no more than emotional / psychological duress at the particular time the sample was written?

Quite.

Also, someone might write in a certain way because for them it's aesthetically pleasing, or as alluded to above, because the teacher would crack you across the knuckles for looping in a non-approved way (been there...).

 

[Mikefule]

There are too many variables for graphology to be reliable. My handwriting varies according to the purpose of what I am writing, the pen I am using, the amount of space available, whether I am in a hurry, and many other factors. My writing is very different if I am scribbling a note for myself, writing message in a birthday card, or completing an application form for a job.

At school, I was taught a particular style of handwriting: an approved way of shaping and joining each letter, analogous to a computer font. If I had gone to a different school, I would have been taught a different font.

The alphabet used in England has two distinct shapes for lower case "a", 2 for lower case "g", and 2 for lower case z. These variants require more or less "work" to inscribe, and will therefore affect the speed and care with which you write them.

As a youth, I read about graphology. I still vaguely remember some basics: small handwriting is precise; leaning to the right implies determination or ambition; leaning to the left implies reluctance or reserve; long downstrokes suggest selfishness or an introverted nature; long upstrokes imply generosity or an extroverted nature.

I therefore experimented with making my writing slope more to the right, and using longer upstrokes. Point is, anyone can read a book of graphology and modify their handwriting according to what they want to portray. They may not successfully portray what they intend, but they will portray something that is misleading, or at least sends confused signals.

Then of course you need to make allowance for dyslexia, dyspraxia, arthritis, different levels of education, different languages and dialects and a hundred other things. A person writing Welsh will use more of certain characters than a person writing German or French. Habit and haste will tend to modify how they write those particular characters.

A signature is a special thing: a combination of writing and a "brand" that presents you tot he world in a certain way. Many young people experiemnt and design and practise their signatures. I did.

My teenage signature then developed as I progressed in a job that required me to initial or sign many thousands of documents. It went from being a carefully shaped "brand" to being a dismissive squiggle with a bit of a flourish.

Then one day I had to apply for a driving license and I was required to fit my signature into a very limited space. I had to redesign my signature and, based on security advice, made it as tidy, clear and legible as possible. My personality did not change in the 24 hours between my dismissive flourish of a signature, and my small, tidy and legible signature. (Interestingly, my bank has never queried the fact that my cheques now bear a significantly different signature from the sample in their records!)

I suppose there are certain things you can infer about someone's mood or degree of haste if you look at a sample their writing, particularly if you are familiar with their writing generally. However, the idea that you can draw extensive Holmesian inferences from someone's handwriting is absurd.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Just remembered- dots above the descender line, to form the letter "i" or "j", that get handwritten *as little circles*. That is such a reliable girlie identifier (in my simplistic summary). I've never seen a guy write like this, unless they were a cartoon artist. Some girls never do this, and it tends to predicate younger rather than older females...but certainly not universally-so

Hmmm. My signature has little circles above the letter 'i'. At the time when I designed my signature, I did do rather a lot of cartoons and considered it as a career.

 

[Shady]

I got told off when i did real writing at school for sloping to the left, so, i sloped to the right, and got hit, so, i wrote in capital letters , and they were pleased, now i have a tendency, when i real write, to slope to the right, and i still write in capital letters, most of the time.

 

[escargot]

We've had threads on this.

 

[EnolaGaia]

We've had threads on this.

Indeed, there's been one dedicated to handwriting / graphology, which didn't seem to be indexed in the search database. This new 2019 thread has now been merged into it.

 

[Shady]

I bought an ink cartridge pen today, I fancied going back to the days at school in which we used them, I noticed I wrote with more flourishes, more real writing than usual, give me a quill and ink please, I loved writing with my new pen, I love the jel pens as well, a lot of things can alter the way you write as mikefule said.

 

[James_H]

Interestingly, my bank has never queried the fact that my cheques now bear a significantly different signature from the sample in their records!

My bank are so irritatingly pedantic about my signature that I can hardly ever get it approved.

 

[Ermintruder]

We've had threads on this

I thought so too, but could not find any despite detailed searching

Indeed, there's been one dedicated to handwriting / graphology, which didn't seem to be indexed in the search database.

Curious- why would that happen?

 

[EnolaGaia]

I thought so too, but could not find any despite detailed searching

Curious- why would that happen?

I'm not sure ... We were holding our collective breath during last autumn's emergency migration, fearful that the many holes in the forum's internal search database would proliferate. It appeared that the resident database had been greatly expanded in the wake of the migration, and initial scans here and via Google led me to estimate re-indexed coverage of actual accessible threads was at least 95% of actual threads (far more than the last internal search database seemed to reflect).

Even with this improved coverage, there are still bits of past carnage here and there. In this case, the earlier thread failed to show up on an internal search using 'grapholog*' (variants). I found it on a secondary sweep using Google, but only when searching on 'writing'. This is only the second or third internally-unindexed thread I've discovered since the migration. Editing / merging forces updates to the index, so it's 'find-able' now.

 

[Ermintruder]

We recently received a handwritten postcard from a good mutual friend, sent by herself from her native Poland (to which she has temporarily returned as ex-patriot tourist).

Despite having been mildly-ravaged by the rain, the writing on the card the card was neat, legible and made sense: except I found-out I could only read it as long as I didn't read it properly.

To clarify: the lady who wrote this (in English) had consistently-used the letter 'm' everywhere within each word that should've possessed an "n"....

And everywhere within each word that should've possessed an "m", she'd used a unique letter of the alphabet which had four descenders

I know her well-enough to ask her in person such that when I next see her (back home, here, in Scotland) whether this is just a personal idiosyncrasy, or something else (I find it unlikely that it'd be an uncorrected/ingrained error, as she is a graduate, highly-intelligent, and an excellent English speaker). It'll be interesting to see what she says...

I don't think this apparently-alternative consonant use is somehow fundamentally-Polish in its origin, but ....I wonder if this could somehow be a factor in the effect.

However, so saying, I had a brief look online at some samples of Polish handwriting in English, and this one jumped out at me: not because of any direct similarity with the above 'm/n transcodices', but more in terms of the writer's curious inconsistencies in respect of the graphformations used for the letter "n"....

(nb this handwriting is just a Reddit image extract, NOT associated with that upon my curious postcard)

Any theories in advance of my future interrogation?

 

[ghughesarch]

We recently received a handwritten postcard from a good mutual friend, sent by herself from her native Poland (to which she has temporarily returned as ex-patriot tourist).

Despite having been mildly-ravaged by the rain, the writing on the card the card was neat, legible and made sense: except I found-out I could only read it as long as I didn't read it properly.

To clarify: the lady who wrote this (in English) had consistently-used the letter 'm' everywhere within each word that should've possessed an "n"....

And everywhere within each word that should've possessed an "m", she'd used a unique letter of the alphabet which had four descenders
View attachment 58303

I know her well-enough to ask her in person such that when I next see her (back home, here, in Scotland) whether this is just a personal idiosyncrasy, or something else (I find it unlikely that it'd be an uncorrected/ingrained error, as she is a graduate, highly-intelligent, and an excellent English speaker). It'll be interesting to see what she says...

I don't think this apparently-alternative consonant use is somehow fundamentally-Polish in its origin, but ....I wonder if this could somehow be a factor in the effect.

However, so saying, I had a brief look online at some samples of Polish handwriting in English, and this one jumped out at me: not because of any direct similarity with the above 'm/n transcodices', but more in terms of the writer's curious inconsistencies in respect of the graphformations used for the letter "n"....
View attachment 58304
(nb this handwriting is just a Reddit image extract, NOT associated with that upon my curious postcard)

Any theories in advance of my future interrogation?

I went through a phase, as a teenager, of doing something similar with, at least, capital N and M - starting them with an ascending stroke that connected to the top of the first downstroke and left n looking like m and m having three "arches" (though the left-hand one was more of an inverted v-shape).

 

[EnolaGaia]

The illustrative Reddit example shows something like rapid printing using script / written gestures to form individual / separate letters. This is not the same thing as continuous "script" handwriting. Some folks never learn (or forget) how to write with continuous script, leaving them to "print" (letter-by-letter) with or without script-style letter implementations.

My point is I can't determine whether the sample's writer was "fast printing, sometimes script-style" or the latter lines in the illustration represent what passes for his / her most fluid form of handwriting.

 

[Ermintruder]

I went through a phase, as a teenager, of doing something similar with, at least, capital N and M - starting them with an ascending stroke that connected to the top of the first downstroke and left n looking like m and m having three "arches" (though the left-hand one was more of an inverted v-shape).

Aha....I wonder? Is that what she's doing? I do understand what you're saying. This genuinely justifies the use a magnifying glass (or a macro mobile-phone picture)

 

[Xanatic*]

I was taught a form of joined up writing in school, and it did annoy me how the n's looked like m's and the m's looked even longer.

 

[Sid]

I was taught a form of joined up writing in school, and it did annoy me how the n's looked like m's and the m's looked even longer.

Interestingly, letter 'n' - a small ripple atop a larger ripple, that also stood for a cobra, or snake!
Letter 'm' - ripples on water, or a mountainous scape.