So you wanna learn about Handwring Analysis?

Handwriting Analysis via
WWW.HWA.ORG
The Original Web Handwriting Site

Handwriting Analysis (also known as Graphology) has interested people since the beginning of the hand-written word. How far back does it go, you ask? Well, actually, you need to remember that in ancient times only scribes, scholars and the clergy could read and write, so the large majority of people on the planet weren't even in on the project!

It wasn't until the last couple hundred years or so that the vast general public began to read and write and have a reason to give people a chance to start looking at the massive collection of scribbles out there to "analyze." But it wasn't until late in the last century and beginning of this century that any great amount of study went into trying to figure out what it all meant.

Sure, there were exceptions, like Dr Camillo Baldo, professor at the University of Bologna who in 1622 published the first known work on it,

"Della maniera di conoscere la natura e le qualità dello scrittore in una lettera."

Or for those of you who don't speak Italian:

"A Way of Knowing the Nature and Qualities of a Writer from a Letter Written."

His basic introduction to the concept ran like this:

"Colui che apprenderà che gli è possibile riconoscere i pensieri, l'indole e la disposizione dello scrittore, per mezzo di una lettera intima, ridarà o si meraviglierà grandemente."

Essentially:

If you're willing to learn about Handwriting, it is possible to understand the thoughts, emotions and disposition of the writer just from a portion of the writings from an intimate letter and be fairly amazed and astonished at the result.

These were almost incredible assertions at the time. And, I might add, fairly useless to the masses because remember that most people at that time neither read nor wrote, and rather just left that sort of "fancy stuff" to the academics and the clergy who seemed to get something out of it. So Baldo's "discovery" had to wait until society caught up with his fascination for the subject!

Probably the biggest social push to dive deeply into some of these great questions had to wait a couple hundred years yet, into the mid to late 1800's, with French and German scholars most prominent: Abbott Jean-Henri Michon, (1806-1881); Jules Crepieux-Jamin (1858-1940); Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) among others. You are invited to dive deeply into the historical perspectives of HWA later if you're interested in these things. But for now:

Handwriting is a personal art and a personal expression, with no two people writing precisely the same because it's more than just scribbling shapes and designs on paper according to societal norms. It's also linked in with the writer's nervous system, brain functioning, health, emotional state, and general outlook on life. As you might guess, your own handwriting does fluctuate. But as it fluctuates, it does so fairly consistently within the patterns of your own consistensies and inconsistensies in life. That's a part of why it's so valuable a tool for looking more deeply into the Self.

As we like to say around here:

You can't change your handwriting
without changing your life,
and
You can't change your life
without changing your handwriting.

Many people often tell us things like: "Oh, but I have several different kinds of handwriting. What about that!? I must be different, or messed up!"

No. Not really. We all have several different flavors of handwriting, depending on how hurried we are, how irritated, how flirtatious, how interested or disinterested we are in the subject we're writing about. But it's still essentially quite predictably similar, even within the parameters of all your personal variations. It's something like your hair: Even after tossing and turning all night in bed, with your hair a mess in the morning, that person is still fairly recognizably you!

Okay then. You're fairly normal. So then, what is it we look at then, in order to learn more about someone from their handwriting? What traits will we look at of your hand (handwriting) when you submit your Handwriting Sample in our particular format? And what might we learn from it? You can take a sampler view of your own handwriting by using our nifty little Self-Evaluation engine here. That will give you some idea of what others might see in your handwriting. Then, after you've played with that a while

Let's take a look first at some of the traits we'll examine:

The overall view (gestalt) of the handwriting

How does it lay on the page?
Subjectively, what is the FEEL of the hand?
Subjectively, what is the basic form or picture of the hand?
Check intensity (or lack of intensity) of the hand

Then, when we look a little more deeply at the details, we see:

Slope of Baseline
Slant of individual letters / words
General Angularity / Roundness of the hand
Shape of individual letters / numbers
Distance between letters
Distance between words
Distance between lines
Margins you choose (Left, Right, Top and Bottom)
Height of general letters
Width of general letters
What you do with Ascenders (letters which reach up)
What you do with your Middle Zone (mid range of all letters)
What you do with your Descenders (letters which reach down)
Your Signature's personal expression of who you are
Your Printed name's private view of the Self

And what might you learn about someone from looking at their handwriting? Well... that depends on which aspect of the hand you look at, and how comfortable you are at deciphering aspects of those traits or aspects. But as a general rule, let's just say that it's usally fairly easy to see people's:

Engery Level
Tendency to be Introverted / Extroverted
Sensitivity vs. Driving Demand
Work Habits
Level of Drive to Succeed
Level of Communication: Quiet vs. OutSpoken

and there are a host of other things which MAY show up, but of course, depend on the person's particular history or psychological makeup as to whether they're there or not.

As we said above, actually no two people will have the same handwriting, nor would be read the same way by a competent handwriting analyst. There is an unending variety of people on the planet here, and not surprisingly, quite an unending variety of interpretative information yielded from a handwriting, as well.

Probably the best way for you to understand what kinds of things we can learn from you handwriting would be for you to just submit your handwriting to us now, and we'll show you what we see. Or, if you'd like to play around a bit first and do a SelfEval to examine your own handwriting here (or someone else's) by plugging in a few trait questions, then give that a whirl before you commit to anything. It's free.

To get an idea of the kinds of things others have said about our work, or the kinds of things we've told them, feel free to take a look either at our Sample Excerpts which are actual excerpts which have come from previous samples we've done, or responses from the General Public of people we've read. In the excerpts, by the way, we've removed segments which might identify the particular person it was written for, but include it so you get the idea of what kinds of things we might be telling you.

Then if you're ready: Take the step. Get that handwriting sample of yours done in our format and send it in for us to look at and get back to you. Whatever your choice, we welcome you to continue to further browse this Site and let us know if we can be of assistance.

If someday you would like to learn more about the specific form of Handwriting Sampling and Analysis we do here, there is a book which will be coming out sometime soon, called Handwriting Analysis JAQS Style by the creator of the format, and the curator of WWW.HWA.ORG and expert Handwriting Analyst here, Jerral Sapienza. Be looking out for that early this next year: ISBN 0971710732 $16.95 from LLX Press.

Thanks for coming by, and thanks for remembering us to your friends if you like what you see here, and you like what we've done for you. We have thousands of happy visitors from the last few years, and we'd love to be able to count you among our happy return visitors, as well. We'll see you again soon!