From Kate’s Writing Crate…
We all remember the stubby pencils we were given in school and the really wide-ruled paper
with the extra dashed lines so we would learn where lowercase letters mostly
started. Posted on the wall was the alphabet written A a B b C c D d…Z z
so we had a model to follow as we copied the letters on our pages. Soon we
could write our own words down. A few grades later, we learned cursive,
switched to pens, and then the fun began.
Printing
is useful, but cursive is beautiful. I loved everything about writing in
cursive. I loved pens more than pencils. I loved all the colors of ink though I
mostly used blue and black. I loved the embellishments that made my handwriting
unique. And I loved that I could write almost as fast as I thought.
Everyone’s
handwriting should be uniform. We all learned the same alphabet with the same
standard letters. Yet once we graduated to cursive, we went our own ways: easy
to read or difficult, large or small letters, slanted or straight up. We wrote in
ways comfortable to ourselves.
I never thought any more
about it than that until I learned about graphology, the analysis of
handwriting.
Decades ago, I was
reading The Tightrope Walker by
Dorothy Gilman—a murder mystery that starts with a written clue found hidden
inside a hurdy-gurdy. Needing more information than just the words in the note,
the lead character decides a graphologist’s opinion would be helpful.
I had
never heard of a graphologist, but I thought it was a fascinating profession.
After I finished the book, I looked up graphologists to see if there were any
nearby. There were five in the closest big city and one was a woman so I called
her.
I
explained to her that I had just finished a book with a graphologist as a
character and that I was interested in learning more about graphology. As most people do when
they are passionate about a topic, she started to explain what she did. I asked
her how she was trained, who hired her, and what she could tell about people
she’d never met.
We talked for about twenty
minutes. Then she said she would examine my handwriting if I filled out a form
and mailed it back to her which I did. Her analysis was spot on and I was
hooked. I signed up for a class on graphology immediately and
bought books on the subject. I learned how to “read” handwriting. Graphology is
an amazing, insightful field of study.
When I worked as an accountant,
one of my bosses discovered an embezzler. I didn’t know about graphology then,
but I remembered the person wrote with very unusual o’s. They were more like
upside down u’s, open at the bottom. I had never seen this before. While I was
studying graphology, I discovered this can be a handwriting trait of an
embezzler.
The way you write your
letters like m’s, k’s, capital I’s, etc. is revealing as is the overall look of
your handwriting. Slant, size, and strength (how deep is the impression on the
paper) can tell how empathetic, detail-oriented, and emphatic you are among
other things. There is a literary trait in handwriting, too—any e’s and cursive lowercase r’s that look similar to a reversed 3.
Graphology is a great tool
for learning about character traits in general as well as in people you need to
deal with on a regular basis. This knowledge can help you get along better with
them.
So dot your i’s and cross
your t’s then study how others do the same. The similarities and differences
are illuminating.
