The Art of Handwriting: It’s About the Story
In May of 1997, one month before my parents’ wedding, eleven months before I was born, and five years before we moved into the house we live in now, my mom acquired a box of recipe cards.
We haven’t really used them to cook with and probably never will. In the digital age, why would we? Google can provide an endless supply of recipes should my family decide to venture away from our usual chicken parmesan dinner.
For twenty-one years, though, my parents have held onto them. Why? Because each card is handwritten by a different attendee of my mother’s bridal shower — friends, cousins, aunts, and grandmothers. To throw away the box would be like throwing away a collection of old letters; each one has a unique message.
Like this one written by my grandmother, for example. Decorated Spice Cookies. We have never actually made these cookies — we rarely make cookies in general. But this card has a story behind it, one reflected through the handwriting in ways that the generic font on a cooking blog just cannot compete with. And for me, that’s worth holding onto.
I’m not the only one who places value on handwritten pieces of paper; our country has been doing it for years. Since 1952, the United States Constitution has laid in a protective glass case with more temperature control than my great aunt’s beach house in Florida. Original manuscripts of famous works have long been featured in museums or held by wealthy collectors. Even lesser known pieces of paper can sell for tens of thousands if penned by the right person; just last Friday, someone paid $88,780 for a small thank-you note written by Babe Ruth.
My grandma is no baseball icon, but we keep her index card for the same reason that lucky bidder bought the thank-you note. It’s not a matter of what was written but rather who wrote it.
For many people, handwriting is a matter of personal pride — a physical representation of who they are.
So it comes as no surprise that many people try to preserve the handwriting of their loved ones, especially when said loved ones pass away. DIY blogs such as this one provide methods for preserving handwritten cards, including framing them, reprinting the penmanship onto a cutting board, or overlaying calligraphy onto a photograph. If the vast number of Pinterest boards is any indication, the replication of handwriting in tattoo form is an upward trend. One woman, for example, was featured in the Today Show for her tattoos of her nieces’ and nephews’ handwriting after they were tragically killed in a fire last summer. It’s clear that even ordinary scribble can have some kind of personal significance.
For a society that places value on collecting handwriting, though, we sure haven’t written much for the future to collect.
In 2010, the Common Core standards released to schools completely eliminated cursive writing from the curriculum, and emphasized the importance of keyboarding over print penmanship, according to a New York Times article last year. Author Anne Trubek points out the logical reason for this: “there are few instances in which handwriting is a necessity, and there will be even fewer by the time today’s second graders graduate.”
As early as 1935, people have been “bemoaning the decline of handwriting,” according to Time Magazine. In 1947, the article states, teachers and parents blamed the age’s technology — “typewriters, shorthand, telephones and Dictaphones.”
But today’s information technology is more efficient than those people could have ever imagined. A 2014 study cited in The Guardian found that out of 2,000 people asked, “one of three respondents had not written anything by hand in the past six months.” Handwritten copy, the article says, “is fast disappearing in the workplace.”
In a world where technology allows us to type so quickly, there may not seem to be any reason for handwriting to remain.
Efficiency, however, isn’t the only matter to think about. In fact, many scholars have questioned whether the ability to type quickly actually compromises other things: such as quality.
Think about the last time you sat down to write a letter, or a thank-you card, or even a sticky note to your roommates claiming the last slice of pizza in the fridge. When putting the ink to the page, you likely gave each word some thought. Sure, it might not take more than a few seconds to write “Do not touch my pepperoni,” but this still applies; you know you can’t write “peppironey” and expect the note to have the same effect. So you try your best to get it right the first time.
Now imagine sending a text version of this. Unless you are composing an iMessage to some guy you really want to impress, you are not likely thinking too much about writing it well. If it has a typo, or you forget to add something, or the plans change, or the wording seems wrong, you can just follow it up with another text. Or say, “autocorrect sorry!” and move on.
The reality is, the very thing that makes writing more efficient — keyboards, auto-correct, and the ability to go back and delete or rewrite a phrase — is allowing us to spend less time actually thinking.
Research with college students backs this up. Many researchers suggest that writing by hand is more effective than typing in terms of retaining new information. Three separate studies conducted by psychologists Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, for example, indicate that students who take notes by hand are more likely to answer “conceptual-information” questions than those who type the notes — mainly because it takes longer. The efficiency of typing allows students to transcribe lectures verbatim, and consequently disadvantages the brain because there is no need for information processing.
Long-hand writing isn’t just for note-takers, though. Novelist Jon McGregor, in a Twitter conversation recorded in The Guardian, prefers writing his novels on pen and paper because it’s more portable and process-oriented:
“Writing on the page stays on the page, with its scribbles and rewrites and long arrows suggesting a sentence or paragraph be moved, and can be looked over and reconsidered. Writing on the screen is far more ephemeral — a sentence deleted can’t be reconsidered.”
Laptops also provide another hindrance: the internet. As many of us know, this can bring on a slew of distractions that pen and paper don’t carry. From email notifications to cat videos, the internet is a go-to place for procrastination — detrimental to students and professional writers alike.
But I want to talk about what happens to handwriting after it’s written. I want to talk about the secrets handwriting reveals. Because if there’s one thing handwriting does have going for itself, it’s the authenticity it brings to the paper.
Though some of us may have been taught the same way, we all inevitably write differently. Some write with lots of loops, others write in small, orderly lines. Our “deviation from the copybook learnt” is what sets us apart from others, according to the British Institute of Graphologists, an organization which advocates for handwriting analysis in the digital age.
It is this deviation that graphologists, known as handwriting analysts, examine. So unique is a person’s handwriting, they claim, that it can provide a “whole psychological profile” with which one can assess the “character and capabilities of the writer.” In other words, handwriting is like DNA. Except maybe even more personal.
“Expert graphologists,” the site claims, “can achieve a very high degree of accuracy” by measuring the variations of movement, spacing and form — slants, angles, etc. And unlike psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, who need to talk to the person in question to come to their conclusions, graphologists are able to base conclusions on just “the symbolic form” available on paper.
If this sounds a little bit quack to you, you aren’t alone. Most scholars in recent years have dismissed graphology as pseudoscience, as it does not bode well in the many controlled studies which have sought to determine its validity. But handwriting analyses have continued to contribute to academia.
The most recent issue of The Graphologist includes an analysis of Donald Trump’s handwriting during the 2016 presidential election. Analyst Stephen Borisoff uses three writing samples of the then-nominee to conclude that, among other things, Trump “bends reality,” has an “unbalanced personality” and “perceives the environment out there as an extension of himself.” Though his descriptions of Trump make sense, it begs the question of whether or not these judgments are not simply based on knowledge of Trump’s actions — how can one truly analyze the handwriting of such a polarizing person with no bias whatsoever?
I had a similar reaction when reading an older exchange between graphologist Andrea McNichol and two editors of Psychology Today. Though the editors stated they were initially hesitant to meet with McNichol on the grounds that “it doesn’t get much respect among academics or the psychology community,” but her “persistent” efforts eventually won them over. This is an excerpt of their conversation about Jackie Kennedy:
“Take a look at a letter Jackie Kennedy wrote shortly after her husband’s death in 1963. What does it say to you given the slant information we discussed?”
“The slant is leftward. She’s withdrawn.”
“Exactly. Do you remember the events following the assassination of President Kennedy-people remarked how Jackie showed no emotion whatsoever. We wanted her to cry, to do something … but it just wasn’t in her to do it. Getting back to the page; is there anything that catches your eye immediately?”
“The signature seems strange … too far below the paragraph.”
“What does that suggest to you?”
“She wants to separate herself from what she’s writing. Maybe she doesn’t feel strongly about what she wrote.”
“That’s possible. She certainly feels isolated. Since I haven’t brought this up yet, I suppose it was dumb to expect you pick up on it, but don’t the strokes on the capital I’s as well as the lower-case t’s and k’s seem somewhat exaggerated? They look very unnatural to me. This feature of handwriting is called “clubbed stroking” and may indicate a potential for cruelty. The only way you can make these dubs is to bear down on the pen at the beginning or end of the stroke. If you grab a piece of paper and try to make letters like this, the movement is bound to make you feel tense and angry.
It’s kind of a given that the former First Lady was emotional after the assassination; after all, the woman literally held pieces of her husband’s skull in her hands. We don’t really need graphology to prove that she was feeling tense.
But the interview does elicit an interesting question— does our handwriting change to reflect our emotional state?
The short answer is yes.
Mark R. Dehe, a certified handwriting analyst for The Write Choice, writes that one can find signs of optimism or depression in a handwriting sample by looking at either the slant of the overall handwriting or the slant of the crossbar in the letter T:
“If the crossbar travels in an upward position from left to right, meaning it ends higher than where it started, then optimism is present.” The same goes for handwriting in general.
However, Dehe reasons, “If the person does not possess the optimistic trait, it doesn’t automatically mean that that person is depressed, nor does it mean that he or she is not optimistic. This simply means that the person that does possess this trait is generally more optimistic than those without it, as it is a core part of who they are.”
By the same token, a downward position is thought to be an indication of depression — or at least temporary sadness.
Analyzing the “depressive level” of handwriting can prove a useful skill in criminal investigation — it has been used to detect the “authenticity” of suicide notes. If DNA tests prove that the note was written by a suicide victim, but handwriting analysis does not indicate any sign of depression, then perhaps there is more to the story: was he or she forced to write the note against his or her will? Dehe says that the handwriting characteristics of a scared person will be much different from that of a severely depressed person:
A scared person will have heavy handwriting, very probably with a shaking hand. A depressed person will have the depressed traits mentioned above, along with fatigue, among other things.
A sample of course material from a graphology course The Hidden Meaning of Handwriting asserts this same idea. “Anxiety will show up as an almost imperceptible trembling in the strokes of certain letters,” it states, and even if it isn’t visible to the naked eye, “it will in all likelihood show up under a microscope.” Perhaps I should put a microscope to my 9th grade biology final exam.
A drastic change in handwriting can also be an indication of something more serious. According to an Everyday Health magazine article, “screening for early stages of Alzheimer’s disease often includes tests that evaluate a patient’s ability to write” as it can help detect disease progression. A similar concept involves using handwriting as an “objective tool” for diagnosing Parkinson’s disease.
But what about just plain old age? From purely personal observation, I’ve noticed that most children write in very large strokes — perhaps due to uncultivated fine-motor skills. On the opposite end of the spectrum, elderly people, whose fine-motor skills are likely diminishing, tend to have large handwriting as well.
Graphology may not a hard science, or a reputable profession, but the idea that handwriting reveals our ups and downs — literally and figuratively — is not all that far-fetched. For me, that means a sample of my handwriting does tell a story, even if I’m not exactly sure what that story is.
But if all of us continue to type up our notes, or send all of our messages through text, or use only electronic signatures, we won’t even have a sample of writing to start with.
All of our writing will look the same.
And, frankly, it already does. We write essays in 12-point Times New Roman font and post statuses on Facebook in the standard format it uses. Don’t even get me started on the limited multiple choice options for displaying a “Feeling or Activity” — the statuses all start to look the same.
Is this not an indication of conformity?
Furthermore, because the medium with which our messages are shown looks the same regardless of who the messenger is, we miss out on the ability to look beyond the message. A text from my aunt holds the same weight, at least at first glance, as a text from my seven-year-old cousin when she steals her mom’s phone — the ten-digit identifier is still the same.
In a world where numerical digits— from cell phone numbers to credit card numbers — are more valuable in terms of identification than personalized signatures, I fear that our generation is losing its authenticity.
We owe it to ourselves to write things by hand. Not because cursive is dying, or because it’s less distracting, or even because it helps retain information. We need to write things by hand because we deserve to give ourselves the rest of the story — to have physical evidence of our existence that goes beyond our social security numbers. Because if we don’t, we won’t have a story that comes through the paper. Our children and grandchildren won’t have something to hold onto — no recipe cards to convey who we were and what mattered to us at that moment in time.
