Project Scope
I gathered some hand writing samples from my co-workers in hopes of analyzing them. The top line is my own writing and I had the others write the sentence, "I love eating cheesecake."
Let's take a moment and analyze the samples, but before that here are some facts:
The top line is my handwriting.
The person on the 3rd line is left handed.
The hand writing on lines 4 and 9 are from people who finished high school before 1990.
The hand writing on line 8 is the most precise in terms of straightness (Horizontal)
Everyone until line 7 also misspelled the word cheesecake.
I had intended to do deductions based on the hand writing samples but deductive reasoning sometimes requires more data than what I have on the page. That being said, my deductions are minimal. As time goes by I may be able to do more, but for now let's see what we can gather from the samples. (Read my other articles related to this post to find out what else I learned while doing this project.)
Deduction
I mention that the person on line three (3) was left handed and this was confirmed from the writer. If you will note, the slant that appears for both the"I" and "L" are extremely sharp. This was the first thing that stood out to me on this sample. But good deductions aren't based on just one piece of evidence, but multiple pieces. Unfortunately, I didn't get more samples to compare against. But even without it, I bet you can note the piece of evidence that is unique to right handed people and left handed. Without lines to guide the writing, our hands tend to move in a very natural way in relationship to our elbow. Place your elbow on a flat surface. Now move your hand from left to right. If you are moving your right arm, take note how your right hand slants upwards as you move it to the right. If you are moving your left hand notice it moves downwards. Take a look at the writing. Notice which samples move upwards as the writer completes the sentence and notice how it moves down. The ones that move upwards are the right handed writers. The one line, for sure that moves down at the start of the stroke is line 3. So this writer is left handed. I assume line 4 might be left handed also but I can't be sure of that. Mimicry is pretty common with these samples. I misspelled line 1 and everyone until line 7 mimicked that. Also, in line 1 I make almost a crescent shape with my writing. The writer in line 2 also imitated that writing shape; the writing goes down, then up again. So it's hard to say for sure that the writer in line 4 didn't just mimic the writing in line 3. The writer in line 3 is left handed.
Inductive Reasoning
The age of the writers may be reasoned on or at least guessed at. Take a look at the bottom line, line 9. This line is unique compared to every other sample. The writing is almost calligraphic in nature. I looked at this and asked, why would someone write this way? To impress? That didn't seem likely considering the sentence I prompted the writers to perform. It's not necessarily easy to read but rather the fluidity of it is what drew my attention. As if the person writing it was used to writing longer sentences than others. This lead me to the realization that after the 90's hand writing, while in use, was slowly becoming less common in terms of writing longer passages in schoolwork. For example, think about how papers are written today and how a lot of schooling is done compared to any schooling done before 1990. Now days, you receive hand outs that have most of the work filled out for you. When you turn in a paper it's electronic. Writing at one stage of the 1900's was one of the primary ways to record data, so good hand writing was emphasized by many. But I suggest that anyone that graduated before the 1990's, would have similar characteristics in their writing. They would naturally have a more fluid script than those post computer based classrooms. I'm not suggesting that modern writers might not have fluidity in their writing. And they may have similar elements to their writing, but it would be against the grain to see calligraphic writing now days as opposed to a hybrid of type and calligraphy. I would suggest that most calligraphic writers graduated from primary school before 1990. See if you can see what I see. Look for any hand writing that is either completely type or mostly type and I theorize that that persons primary education was completed after 1990.
Line 8 is unique
The writer on line 8 has the smallest and straightest writing. This is suggestive of a couple of things:
Ethnically -Certain languages lend themselves well to writing horizontally. For example, Chinese is a language that is written more horizontal with it's strokes. I am not saying the writer of this is Chinese but rather that sometimes language matters when looking at script. So the writer in this passage may not have English as their first language.
Economically - The person may have grown up having to save paper or not being permitted to waist it.
Job - There are some professions that require writers to be very deliberate and legible (For example Draftsman).
Gender - Guys tend to write a little more angularly while girls tend to write more bubbly. But when writing is so precise, as the text above, it becomes challenging knowing for sure
The list can go on and on. The only thing I will mention about this writing is that it is not easy to extract information from.
Closed But Not Complete
This closes my project of hand writing analysis. I have learned a lot in the span of a week and I plan to continue to learn. I will be doing additional research on hand writing in the future, but for now I want to keep moving forward in improving my ability to observe the world around me. Also I want to keep exploring how to increase my deductive reasoning skills. Subscribe if you enjoyed this article and would like to be kept in the loop for further projects and blog posts.