For hundreds of years, society has recognized that a human being’s handwritten signature is unmistakable, one-of-a-kind, personal, and unique. It is required to make certain types of legal agreements valid, and it is requested as an acknowledgment of receipt of goods and money. When you sign an affidavit for a court of law, you are confirming it. You are disposing of your own money when you sign a cheque. Every country’s criminal law makes forgery of another person’s signature a serious offense.
Society recognizes the features of your handwriting as an identification of your individual character and personality by providing them with such protection. Recognizing the individual handwriting of friends and relatives, and distinguishing one handwriting from another, is a common experience for all of us in everyday social life, particularly for those of us who have a fairly good visual memory.
As a result, it’s not surprising that many famous people have tried to deduce a writer’s personality from the appearance of his handwriting since the dawn of time. Suetonius, the Roman historian, was always careful to note the unique characteristics of the emperor whose biography he was writing. Many great men, including famous writers such as Shakespeare, Byron, Walter Scott, Browning, and the American Edgar Allan Poe, have attempted to discover the relationship between a person’s handwriting and character in an amateur and intuitive manner.
Graphology is more than just “handwriting analysis.” It is the study of all graphic movement. In addition to handwriting, the graphologist examines doodles, drawings, sculptures, and paintings to gain insight into the writer’s or artist’s physical, mental, and emotional states. Using written symbols to communicate is a uniquely human endeavor. Only Homo sapiens has the ability to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, design the graceful span of the Golden Gate Bridge, or scrawl “For a good time call…” on a bathroom wall, among the millions of species of life on the planet. We are also the only species capable of communicating with graphic symbols long after we have died, through art, books, wills, music, and other means.
Is it possible to produce “handwriting” without using your hands? So, how about we try a little experiment? Please place your pen between your teeth in your mouth. Sign your name on your scratch paper. Did you give it a shot? If not, please give it a shot before continuing. Whose handwriting were you attempting to imitate now? You were attempting to mimic your own writing. And if you were really forced to learn to write this way, you’d eventually be able to produce the same “handwriting” with your mouth as you do with your hand after enough practice. Thousands of people who have lost their hands and had to learn to write with a pen in their mouths or between their toes have produced their own unique “handwriting,” the same handwriting they had when they could use their hands, according to studies.
The point is that our hand, mouth, and toes do not determine which way we write or how big we write. Our brains are the ones who make those decisions. As a result, whenever we make a graphic movement like handwriting, we are actually “brainwriting” and leaving our “brain prints” on the paper. Our brain prints reveal who we are as individuals, as well as how we think, feel, and act. They’re a kind of mental x-ray. And, like our fingerprints, they will always be unique to us. No two people’s brain prints are ever identical.
When we learn a writing system, much of what we do becomes automatic when we pick up a pen. Writing, like speaking, is rote in these areas. They’re the parts of our handwriting that we don’t realize we’re doing. Many people, for example, will state, “I lean my writing to the left or right.” “I’m not sure what to say. I’ll have to investigate this further. That’s something I’ve never considered.” The majority of the time, handwriting is done subconsciously. Without actually thinking about it, we write in our own style. But every now and again, we’ll think to ourselves, “Hey, I’d like to make this a nice letter!” This is an example of a deliberate aspect of handwriting. Have you ever tried writing your signature in a variety of styles to see which one you prefer? Do you use different fonts for different letters in your writing? Do you have odd f’s or strange capital M’s, or do you stylize your e’s? That’s all deliberate stylization. As a result, your work is conscious and unconscious, and both can be studied. The former reveals information about your conscious self, while the latter reveals information about your unconscious self. What characteristics of ourselves, and thus of our writing, are unchangeable? What components of ourselves are unfixed, or are they only transient aspects that can change?
Many scientists believe that humans are born with a certain degree of intellect, which, while it can be boosted or lessened by our surroundings, is innate and fixed. Many people believe that humans are born with natural abilities and temperaments. Furthermore, our identification is fixed, which is why we can distinguish our own handwriting from that of others. For example, if I concealed your writing among a hundred samples of other people’s writing and asked you to discover the one you wrote, you would be able to pick it out of the pile regardless of when you wrote it, the slant, size, or appearance of your sample. That’s because, no matter how your moods fluctuate, a part of your work will always remain the same, just as a part of yourself will always remain the same.
What may be altered? For starters, our health or physical condition can alter. On Tuesday, we might be unwell, but on Wednesday, we’ll be OK. On Friday, we can have medications in our system and then be drug-free the following week. For many of us, the ways we think, feel, and act are also transient states. We could be in a good or negative attitude. We can be tense and irritable one day then mellow the next. That’s the kind of thing that can shift.
