Beyond providing yet another way to categorize your personality, handwriting has even been shown to provide clues about mental health and predict one’s likelihood of professional success1 in some cases. The concept was invented by the French, he notes, and to become a graphologist, you typically have to study for around five to seven years. Beck has over 40 years of experience in graphology himself and says the ways in which someone deviates from the “standard” way to write (whether that be size, spacing, etc.) is what graphologists look for. “It is the differences between what you were taught on the one hand and what you now produce, which are of vital interest to graphologists, as it is in these differences the pattern of a person’s psychology is revealed,” he explains. Each and every deviation from what someone was taught “denotes something about the psychology of the writer and is interpreted accordingly,” he adds. (Note: Graphology only works with scripts written in the Latin or Roman alphabet.) Large writers, for example, like to be noticed and lay a claim in some way to social status, Beck explains. “The small writer by contrast does not like to be noticed, takes up an analytical attitude to everything, and likes to play a low social profile,” he adds. Folks who write with their letters close together or connected are thought to be intuitive and intelligent. Letters more spaced out are thought to indicate someone who’s careful and logical. “That is why signatures are usually different from [someone’s normal handwriting],” he adds, “especially in men’s writing.” If someone’s normal handwriting is small, for example, but their signature is huge, “this means the person puts on a big front or shop window of a larger-than-life personality yet inside is quiet, modest, and analytical,” Beck says. Or perhaps your handwriting is typically quite messy but you’ve got your cursive signature down to a science. This also indicates some level of performance. If your signature is no-nonsense and on the messier side, this would indicate a person who is less preoccupied with external appearances. And if your handwriting is pretty evenly upright? Beck says that reveals someone whose parents had very contrasting personalities and are totally different from each other. “Upright writers are very independent,” he adds.
