Focusing on the analysis of handwriting

By Lim Tri Santosa

BANDUNG (JP): They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But sometimes a single word is worth a thousand pictures. Handwriting is as unique as a fingerprint, and characteristics within the way words and letters are formed can often say more about the person than the words themselves. That's according to handwriting analysts, or graphologists, who say they can assess our personality from a few scrawls.

While not a graphologist, I know that handwriting analysis has good uses and deserves more attention. The technique, which has been around hundreds of years and is a common practice in Europe, is becoming increasingly popular among American employers for screening potential new hires.

Graphologists claim that handwriting displays every aspect of the personality, including factors such as integrity, creativity, secretiveness and stability.

But how does the way we cross our "t"s and dot our "i"s reveal our inner souls? The science of handwriting is based on the fact that everything we do with our hand comes from our brain. Beginning in the brain, the writing impulse travels through the nerves, into the hand holding the pen, and flows out through the ink trail on paper. An accumulation of thousands of visual and auditory experiences, handwriting reveals how you have integrated all that you have seen and heard throughout your lifetime.

Handwriting can provide an accurate picture of the core personality of the writer in general. Sometimes it is also possible to obtain some remarkably specific insight from handwriting. It is an excellent employment-profiling tool because it is completely nondiscriminatory. That's why some U.S. companies, including Xerox, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Citibank and Hewlett-Packard have reportedly used the technique. The graphologist cannot tell age, sex, race, religion or which hand the writer uses.

It's an investigation that is totally legal. Your writing is no more private than the expression on your face. Do you want to learn more about handwriting analysis? There is one good web site which provides a free handwriting analysis service. Hit your browser at www.quantumenterprises.co.uk/handwriting/. Here is your chance to take part in an online interactive handwriting analysis and receive a free handwriting analysis report.

You will be provided detailed instructions on how to create the best handwriting sample. You will then be taken through a series of questions about the sample you created with illustrations and examples to guide you. When the answers to the questions have been received, the results will be transferred to the Graphonomizer (tm) computer program, which will use the scores to compile a written personality profile.

The important thing is that the sample be written as normally as possible, with the subject calm and relaxed and the paper resting on a smooth surface. It took me about one and a half hours to answer 61 mandatory questions concerning my writing style. If your Internet connection drops while you are answering the questions, better to complete all of the questions first then reconnect to the Internet to click on the submit button.

If you have any doubts about a question or answer, it is best to give a neutral reply indicating that the characteristic is not shown. You may want to analyze the handwriting of a friend, your husband or wife, brother or sister, even a potential lover. The subject writer should be at least 16 years old, as there is no provision in the program for analyzing children's handwriting. By the way, if you are interested in examining Monica Lewinsky's handwriting, you can get her handwriting sample at www.writinganalysis.com/lewinsky.gif.

The free analysis report consists of a chart showing the scores for the eight personality traits of the writer subject. The personality chart description of the subject will only indicate those characteristics revealed by the handwriting. If a handwriting characteristic is present, it is very likely that the personality description will be accurate in most respects.

However, if a personality trait is not shown within the handwriting, it cannot be guaranteed that the person will not actually show the trait.

Handwriting reveals your potential, but it cannot foretell the future. Whether you fulfill your potential or not is entirely up to you. The method is only a prediction of potential not a declaration. We can't know if someone is going to act on his or her potential. Handwriting analysis may be helpful and insightful, but it is no crystal ball into the future. But one thing I am sure of... even though your "letters" handwriting sometimes "unreadable", your "numbers" handwriting is always "digitally crystal clear" especially for money matters.