by Kathleen M. Dickinson, CGA

Among the common comments made to me after I analyze someone’s handwriting are "Now tell me the bad things" or "Now tell me the truth". I think that happens for the following reasons

Many people are not given a lot of constructive personality information when they are growing up. Therefore, people expect to be told bad things about themselves.

The reality is, I have told them the "bad" things and the "truth". The fact is, because the handwriting analysis has hit home, they do not necessarily hear the ‘bad’ things as bad.

For instance, if you have sarcasm in your writing and you feel good about being sarcastic then when I tell you that, "you can be sarcastic", you are not going to hear that as ‘bad’. In actuality there are various aspects of ‘sarcasm’. If it appears at every opportunity in a writing it indicates repressed anger, and it can lead to a lot of miscommunication. If it occurs once in a while, then it can be seen as wit or a dry sense of humor.

Synthesis is a very important component of a handwriting analysis. I evaluate all the different things I see and then there are enhancing qualities such as depth of writing, slant, size of the writing, margins etc. Lets break down the brief sample shown here.

Notice the size of the writing. When a person writes ‘large’ it indicates that they see the big picture all the time. A person with extra-ordinarily large writing does best when in charge of a project with a lot of spokes (like an umbrella). That way they can see all the different aspects of the ‘umbrella’ and accomplish everything in that scope. Notice the ‘d’s in ‘did’. The first ‘d’ indicates someone who does not want to beat around the bush, who wants people to be direct with them. The loop in the second ‘d’ represents "sensitivity to criticism" which means the person does not always hear compliments they expect to be criticized. If you know a person with large ‘d’ or ‘t loops it is valuable to get them to hear the compliment so they do not always expect to be criticized.

The sharp ending of the ‘t’ crossing in ‘not’ shows you what sarcasm looks like in writing. It has a knife look to it. You can get an idea of the evaluation process when you understand that the person was probably criticized a lot growing up and the sarcasm became their survival tool. The breaks between the letters in the word ‘catch’ shows intuition and music appreciation. The large space between the words ‘catch’ and ‘the shows personal isolation. Notice how in ‘to’ the t crossing goes back to the left? This indicates self-castigation. The length of the t crossings represents levels of enthusiasm and energy. The clean and open circle letters (o, a, d) shows levels of honesty and talkativeness. The upper loops show the person is breathing (size and width of loop), has developed a philosophy of life and has imagination.

From what I have said so far, we know this person can be a good teacher or presenter (open circle letters, philosophy/imagination in upper loops), they are sensitive to their surroundings (depth of writing), they beat themselves up on things so we need to have compassion for them (back strokes), they are intuitive (breaks within words) and probably benefit from spending time alone (strokes below the baseline do not return to the baseline), listening to music. They are energetic and profit from dancing, or doing physical activities they enjoy (energy in the writing).

Something I always tell my students, is, that one characteristic does not mean anything by itself. It is important to synthesize everything that is in the writing i.e., the depth, slant, margins, other qualities etc. So please do not tell people that you "know" they are "this" or "that" because of anything you read in a handwriting analysis article. It is important to study handwriting analysis in depth to really know all the qualities that go into evaluation.