You Are What You Write

The next time you apply for a job, don't be surprised if the personnel director asks you to fill out the application in longhand--with no typing allowed. Your prospective employer may be among the growing number of businesses that use handwriting analysis as a hiring tool. My estimate is that at least 600 American companies are now employing the services of reputable graphologists, and the comparable figures from Europe are even more impressive: A 1966 survey of industries in the metropolitan area of Amsterdam determined that 80 out of 100 firms polled were using either staff or outside professional graphologists to help them select and promote company personnel.

Even in the world of psychoanalysis, graphology has made some significant achievements. There are still more psychologists who would scorn its use before they would promote it, but many are now ready to admit that an in-depth graphological analysis frequently gets to the core of a patient's emotions more quickly and accurately than conventional psychoanalytical procedures. Again to use the European example, few clinical or industrial psychologists on the Continent would think of going out to practice without some training in handwriting analysis. Remarkably, graphology enjoys special favor in Switzerland, home of the Rorschach test. But it is in the business world, where success is measured mostly on the balance sheet, and where executives are less interested in academic tradition than in results, that graphology is being accorded its most dramatic acceptance. Personnel managers don't care whether or not their evaluative techniques are endorsed by the psychological establishment; they do care that the techniques work, that the people they hire perform according to expectations. Professional handwriting analysis, no matter what might be said about its more dubious amateur practitioners, has delivered. The accumulated statistics for the past six years of my own use of graphology in personnel assessment--which involves the hiring process, from secretaries all the way up to executive management--tallies out at better than 86 percent accuracy, based solely on reports from the companies with which I've dealt. I was especially amused by a comment Robert Wenzlaff of The Equitable Life Assurance Society made at a meeting of the New York City Life Managers Association about my work: "I have hired twenty men whom Anthony rejected in his evaluations," Wenzlaff told the group. "To date, nineteen of those men are no longer with us and the twentieth will be leaving before the end of the month." In increasing numbers, you will find not only personnel directors but sales managers, teachers, social workers, marriage counselors, vocational advisors, psychologists, doctors and even lawyers using graphology to better understand the people with whom they have to work. Word is finally beginning to get out that handwriting is a sort of brain writing and that graphology, as practiced by a professional, is far more than a subspecies of fortunetelling.

Graphology is based on the (continued on page 278)You are what you write (continued from page 189) assumption that handwriting is a spontaneous expression of feelings, thoughts and mental and emotional attitudes. Because it is spontaneous and not totally subject to conscious control, graphologists feel that handwriting--properly interpreted--presents an objective picture of the writer's personality. In its broadest sense, handwriting analysis is predicated on the generally credible notion that human movement is emotionally expressive. At the extremes, in a state of great tension, our muscles are contracted and tightened. In a state of relaxation, the muscles are loose; we are not holding anything in. We are releasing openly, as in stretching or yawning. Both tension and relaxation are states of mind, communicated through the body to the muscles--including the muscles of the arm and hand that create writing. As the psyche wills, the soma reacts. The result is that emotions are reflected on paper.

All of us were taught penmanship in school, but not many of us write that way now. Each of us, at some point in his life, tailors the copybook standard to fit his own personality needs, which sometimes require abandoning the copybook altogether. For this reason, graphology is largely useless in assessing personality traits in grade school children: They have not yet begun to develop their own handwriting style. To a large degree, the conclusions of handwriting analysis are drawn from the consciously contrived differences--and the unconsciously introduced deviations--from the penmanship model. To function effectively, the graphologist must know all of the cursive and printscript alphabets--in other words, all of the penmanship styles--being taught in the nation in which he practices. In the United States, this is no easy task, because our fragmented educational system has produced scores of different copybook styles. But unless the analyst knows the original model on which writing is based, the analytical process is made all the more difficult, though by no means impossible. Graphologists have long known, and businesses are now beginning to learn, that precise copybook legibility--i.e., conventional penmanship--is usually the work of an unimaginative conformist. Such a personality may be perfectly suited to a line job in the bookkeeping department, but the neat and flawless penman usually doesn't have the dynamism that industry seeks in its executive or sales offices.

In addition to knowing the writer's penmanship standard, the analyst should also know the writer's age, sex and polarity--whether he is left- or right-handed. (No matter what anyone tells you, it's impossible to distinguish male from female handwriting, and it's equally impossible to tell a lefty from a right-handed writer solely on the basis of handwriting.) This information permits the analyst to interpret the significance of the writer's deviation from established norms for his sex, age group and copybook training. As with most other psychometric devices, personality projections based on handwriting analysis have been checked against observable facts in tens or even hundreds of thousands of persons. Analytical predictions have been verified and reverified against real-life observations, in a continuing process of refinement. The science is still far from an exact one, but I think it is less fallible than any other form of psychometric projection, and it becomes less fallible as more returns come in. Unlike other forms of psychometric projection, graphology has all the data down on paper. There can be no disputing the raw material. All that is arguable is graphologists' interpretations, and they are improving each year.

• • •

What does your own handwriting say about you? It would be helpful for you to set this article aside momentarily, find your favorite pen or pencil and an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of unlined paper. Then, in your most natural and spontaneous manner, write about ten lines (it doesn't matter what you say) and sign your name three times. Having completed this minor assignment, think about what you just wrote. Did you feel self-conscious and make your writing a bit more legible than usual? Does it look like an answer to a formal invitation--or like one of your telephone jottings? Do your three signatures resemble the rest of your writing, or have you developed a special style of signing your name? These things--and many others--are crucially important in graphology. If the writing assignment caused you to freeze up so perceptibly that what you wrote doesn't look natural, then find a specimen of your regular writing and refer to that as well.

Did you print (disconnected block letters) or did you write (cursive, connected letters)? Only about five percent of all writers choose to print rather than to write, and many of these primafacie unusual personalities have become mildly self-conscious about their "aberration." Actually, printing is no more than a minor deviation from the handwriting mainstream. It represents one small manifestation of nonconformity that, depending on many other aspects of the handwriting sample, may or may not be significant. All other things being equal (which, in graphology, they rarely are), the fact that a person prints usually indicates a propensity toward greater legibility, which points to a higher desire to control and communicate. This conclusion appeals to common sense and is far from earth-shattering; but it is on building blocks such as this, many hundreds of them, that graphology is based.

The job of the professional graphologist is to interpret the meaning of everything you write. Signs, spaces, strokes, slants in your handwriting and even the margins you leave on your page are important. When writing on a blank piece of paper, for example, most people will begin writing at about the same spot each time--the same relative distance down from the top of the page and over from the left-hand edge. A spot check of your own writing will probably confirm this. Since the starting spot is fairly consistent for each writer and varies greatly among different writers, the graphologist assumes that the differences have meaning. In fact, the general use of space on a page seems to provide an index of the writer's aesthetic sensitivity. The starting spot plays a large role in determining the margins for the entire page. The wider the margins, the greater the writer's concern for the artistic quality of the frame that surrounds his graphic image. In other words, a writer who leaves wide margins is more concerned with his surroundings. Narrower margins indicate that the writer has a greater need to cover the page with his thought and being. A narrow-margin writer tends to penetrate his environment more and to use it more to his own advantage. By extension, he has a greater sense of self-importance and a greater need for recognition. How and where you begin to write is a subjective and relatively unconscious indicator of your thoughts and feelings about your place in the scheme of life, your internal organization and the way you approach tasks.

These conclusions may or may not seem to have a common-sense basis. To me they do, but to others they don't. The point to remember is that graphological observations do not spring fully clothed from the head of a half-cocked graphologist. All of the building blocks of graphology--the significance of print versus script, starting point, margin placement and the other indices I'll explore--have been checked against real-life observations. It's not enough to say that the man who prints probably has an above-average desire to communicate, or that the girl who leaves wide margins stands to have a highly developed artistic sense. What remains is to look at the personalities of the people who actually write this way, to see if they really exhibit the predicted characteristics. This is what graphology, over the centuries, has done. The permanence of handwriting gives the graphologist an enormous corpus of raw material to work with. Over the years, the continuing process of checking handwriting hypotheses against observable personality traits has eliminated many tidy observations that just didn't stand up in the face of the facts. Feedback from the checking process has also unearthed many handwriting quirks that seem to correlate directly with personality traits, even though graphologists are at a loss to provide a reasonable explanation for the relationship. Here are some more of the basic components of graphological analysis. Some of them will seem logical, some less logical and some downright inexplicable. But all of them work--to a degree of accuracy between 80 and 90 percent.

If a writer's lines are arrow straight, so that every letter of each word would touch a ruler edge placed under the line, the writer is totally--perhaps obsessively or compulsively--goal directed. Such absolute line control (on unlined stationery, of course) would give a writer high marks for purposefulness but a very low score for flexibility.

If the loops in a writer's Fs, Gs, Hs and Ys keep bumping into each other between lines--a phenomenon that jargonprone graphologists have called alignment convergence--this indicates low organizational ability and perhaps even a conflict in basic values. Clear spacing and no colliding alignment indicate clarity of organization and, presumably, clarity of values.

With all these observations, the reader should bear in mind that in graphology, as in most reputable psychometric testing devices, each individual component is relatively insignificant. Everyone has peculiar handwriting deviations that, if examined alone, might indicate an entirely different personality. In a meaningful analysis, the graphologist has to assess the sum of all the parts and possibly reject a few idiosyncrasies that just don't fit into the larger pattern. So if your own handwriting shows converging loops and you've always thought you were a superior organizer with a well-balanced sense of values, then you probably are. A graphologist would begin to question your self-analysis only if six or a dozen other indices also pointed to low organizational ability. If you were to score low marks on all these, too, then the graphologist would have to conclude either that you're kidding yourself or that you have developed some marvelous compensatory devices.

There are a great many other observations that can be made from the type of line on which handwriting flows: whether the line is straight, slanted, drooping or arched. For instance, if a writer's lines arch gently, gracefully and consistently, then he is probably one who enjoys the satisfaction of strong beginnings and relaxed endings but who reaches the heights of productivity when immersed in a task. If the lines sag a bit in the middle, like a saucer, chances are that the writer, too, may droop or sag in the main part of his efforts. It sounds simplistic, I know, but numerous studies conducted in Germany and in America corroborate the hypothesis.

Some writers can never stick to a preordained base line. Even when they write on lined paper, the end of each word always seems to rise into mid-air, so that a line of their words looks like a row of dominoes that have toppled over onto each other. If each word begins at the base line and ends substantially above it, chances are the writer is possessed with what might be called an ascending spirit. If each word begins on the line and then falls below it, the writer is probably subject to gloomy fits of despair. The line is just one component of writing, one fragment of a larger puzzle. But I once did a performance projection of more than 500 insurance agents, based on nothing but alignment studies--that is, using only the information that the writing line conveys. My projections proved 84 percent accurate. All the rest of graphological method is based on the same empirically proven principles.

Of course, there's a great deal more to graphology than just line and margin. The slant of the words on the page is equally important. Virtually all writers, despite copybook conditioning, have a built-in bias toward the left or the right. A leftward-tending writer (assuming he is right-handed) will give his downstrokes a curve to the left, while a right-tending writer curves his strokes in the opposite direction. Try to make a series of slashes on a piece of paper. If the slashes turn gradually to Cs the faster you move, you're showing a rightward tendency. Should your slashes begin to look like reversed Cs or close-parenthesis marks, then you are either left-handed or you show what we graphologists call a leftward trend. (Left-handedness is such a special phenomenon that I can't begin to discuss it here. The 10 to 12 percent of Playboy readers who are left-handed can content themselves with the thought that they continue to pose almost as many problems to pose almost as many problems to graphologists as they themselves encounter in this decidedly right-handed world. Most of the observations I'll make below--excepting those involving writing slant--apply to lefties as well as to right-handers.)

If you are a right-handed writer who shows left-slanting tendencies, then beware. A tendency toward the left, in graphology, means a tendency toward the past and its unresolved conflicts. A left-tending writer usually constructs his visions from memories and needs a link to his progenitors for security. Perhaps he has an apron string that he has yet to cut. Depending on other corroborative signs in the left-leaner's handwriting, his psyche may range from occasional idle daydreams of ancestral glories to a deep-running reservoir of repressions. These inhibitions may water either his manifest neuroticism or the equally manifest genius a well-handled neuroticism can motivate.

Another relatively simple guide to character is handwriting speed. Since speed is one of the few graphic factors that can be judged by the nongraphologist, you can easily measure your own speed by writing the following sentence over and over until one minute has elapsed: "Please tell me why I start to glare when I watch the quick brown fox jump over the lazy dog."(This sentence is deliberately chosen because its words are quite close to average word length and because it contains all the letters in the alphabet in approximately the frequency they occur in English prose.) Having determined the number of words you can write in one minute, rate your self accordingly:

Words per minute

Score

1-5.......10%

6-10......20%

11-15.....30%

16-20.....40%

21-25.....50%

26-30.....60%

31-35.....70%

36-40.....80%

41-50.....90%

51 or more.....100%

A score of 25 words per minute places you in the 50 percent bracket, which is the midpoint of the speed-distribution curve for all of literate mankind, meaning that half the population writes slower than you do and half faster. A score above 50 percent means you're faster than average and presumably that you can perform other tasks, whether intellectual or physical, with equal celerity. Empirical investigations have shown that handwriting rapidity is one measure of the speed of a writer's mental and physical activity. If a person writes relatively quickly, chances are he is capable of thinking and acting quickly. While my own studies indicate that speed alone isn't an important determinant of creativity or productivity, there's no doubt that the speedy writer is also a speedy conceptualizer.

A graphological factor even more important than speed is the relative size of a handwriting specimen. Please note well the word relative. Everything in handwriting analysis, as I'll explain, is relative, comparative and proportional. There are no absolutes and few inflexible rules.

Graphologists divide handwriting into three zones, thus:

The origin of handwriting zones and their interpretation have their roots in the early history of graphology. In the 17th Century, an Italian physician, Camillo Baldi, systematized a method of judging the character of a writer from the forms of his letters. Most of Baldi's work was subsequently repudiated, but he did lay the foundation for what was to become the science of handwriting analysis. About two centuries later, two French clerics, Michon and Flandrin, spent the better part of their lives investigating tens of thousands of handwriting specimens and correlating strokes with personality traits that repeatedly seemed to follow the graphological manifestations. When Michon finally published his method, he called it graphologie, and the name stuck.

Not surprisingly, Michon and his clerical successors based their findings on a simplistic religious philosophy. They were educated to the spatial symbolism of the ancients, the so-called empyrean trilogy, which divided the universe into three regions: heaven, earth and hell. In their graphological cosmos, everything written in the upper zone was taken to represent heavenly (i.e., good) values; the middle-zone letters represented secular, everyday considerations; and the lower-zone formations depicted the underworld, evil things such as (as one of them put it) "sex, lust, avarice and materialism." As a consequence, graphology became a boon to organized religion--especially to the priests who practiced handwriting analysis. Certainly it opened up new and easy techniques for separating saints from sinners. The French clerics" religious philosophy was undeniably naïve, but many of their empirical observations were not. Even today, some psychoanalytically conditioned graphologists equate regions of the upper, middle and lower zones of the written line with Freud's three forces of psychic life, the superego, ego and id, more or less like this:

In their view, the larger the size of the formations in each of the three areas, the more pronounced is the influence of that particular sphere of the writer's unconscious. While this division of man's writing into three psychosymbolic parts may yield results a bit more useful than those of the old empyrean trilogy, the technique is not much more defensible than saying that the upper zone represents the head or the intellectual forces; the middle zone, the thorax or the lifeblood of social activities; and the lower zone, the abdomen and below, all the urges that are associated with it. Graphology would be much easier to understand if we could make such simplistic and partly mythological assumptions. But holistic psychology and the Gestalt approach to human behavior rule out the simple applications of these archaic principles. Just as astronomy has given way to astrophysics, so has graphology changed appreciably since Freud and Einstein. Modern graphology recognizes our more sophisticated comprehension of the relativity of human behavior in its environment. Graphic variables are just as related and interdependent as the physical and emotional principles that govern man.

Of the three handwriting zones, the middle one is decidedly the most important; in fact, it is crucial. The significance of all the rest of your writing, including the spaces you leave between letters and words, as well as the length and width of your letter extensions into the outer zones, is computed in accordance with its relationship to the height and breadth of the middle-zone forms.

If the average height of your middle zone is between one eighth of an inch and three millimeters, then you strike close to the normal handwriting size for all adults in the Western world. The middle-zone size seems to be a graphic reproduction of the writer's self-assurance --or his ego's need for self-display. The smaller the size, the more modest is the need for acclaim and recognition. The larger the size, the larger the need.

You are considered normal if the upper-zone part of your Hs and Ls, Ds and Ts are twice as tall as your middle-zone Os and Ns. If your upper zones extend considerably higher, you are striving for goals that are presently unattainable. Your reach exceeds your grasp. If your upper zones are much smaller (and your lower zones are, too), then you have probably learned to accept the things you cannot change, even if you are reluctant to change the things you can.

Lower-zone lengths are normal if they do not exceed one and one half times the height of the middle zone. If the loops are twice the size of the middle-zone letters, then the writer is emphasizing his ambition and his striving for greater material or sexual satisfaction. Consciously or unconsciously, he is seeking more of the joys of existence. But the graphologist must examine the form of all the rest of his writing to determine whether the enlarged lower loops represent libidinous needs, material acquisitiveness or simply the rich daydreams of an imaginative voluptuary. Bulbous lower-zone loops signifying these different possibilities are frequently found in handwriting made with a thick pen or pencil. Each datum seems to support the other: The choice of a broad-tipped pen or one of the newer, wide-track devices (felt, plastic or fiber tip) indicates that the writer is a hardy, earthy, physical type. The wider the stroke, the more immediate the need for sensual gratification. In fact, the intensity of the discharge of ink indicates the emotional intensity of the writer's sensual drives. Thinner strokes and less ink indicate more ethereal, ascetic values. The width of the stroke itself usually correlates with the size of the letter forms. Here are two specimens that show this quite clearly.

It should be apparent from even a cursory look that the thick-stroke specimen, top, has a pictorial quality that the thin-stroked, up-and-down specimen lacks. In the thick-stroke sample, the pictorial pattern shows an imaginative and luxuriant flourish of forms--the sort of writing frequently found in visually minded people. The pictorial writer lives in a world of form and color; his mental processes tend to produce concrete images, supported by his rich sensory impressions and pictorial perceptions.

The writer of the other sample, which illustrates what we graphologists call linear handwriting, is more functional and motor oriented. He writes in straight lines and angles, with little concern for rounded forms. His up and down strokes look like a cardiogram. The linear writer is more moved by kinesthetic experiences than by visual sensations. He also tends toward more abstract thinking.

As significant as the size and form of a writer's letters are the linkages that join them together. The way a writer links his letters seems to indicate the manner in which he relates to friends and to his environment. The linkages also give a picture of how he translates impulses into action. In order to assess your personal style of linkage, you'll have to do another writing experiment. On a pad of paper at least a few sheets thick, use a pen or a fairly sharp pencil and copy, as accurately as you can, these eight writing movements:

If you are like most writers, one of these patterns should have been easier to copy than any of the others. Perhaps, as you sped up toward the end of each line, all eight specimens--or at least most of them--began to take the shape of the one you favor most. However, if your samples, once you got going, are totally different from any of the eight, don't despair. This only means that you don't conform to a single connective style; that's a positive sign.

Writers who use connectives resembling number one or number two, above, have what we graphologists call an arcade style, a phrase that quite well describes the arched, enclosed writing that such a person favors. The arcade writer is a conforming, conserving, traditional person. He enjoys the security and protection of being covered, and he is a grasper and holder of both things and ideas. He is practically oriented and he uses what he gets to good advantage. He can readily become an artistic and constructive realist. But if the arcade is overused, constantly, so that it becomes the dominant theme in his writing and the only means of connection, then the writer betrays an egocentric need for hoarding and controlling. Such a person can become self-righteous and narrow-minded.

The reversal of the arcade is called the garland formation (number three and number four). It should be self-evident that the garland writer is the motor opposite of the arcade writer. The person who shows garlands is usually more responsive and receptive to new people and new ideas. The garland seems to be a graphic gesture of release and acceptance, suggesting an open-mindedness to outside influences. If the formation is very soft--both rounded and flattened down, so as to form saucerlike figures--it can bespeak a timid soul, a patsy or a pushover. More women than men use the pure garland form.

Angles (number five and number six) are the easiest to recognize. The angled writer does not seem to mind the sharp look of his hardheaded script, because he usually has a good quotient of what we associate with the German scientism. His strokes are straight, his connections sharp. His staccato, discontinuous lines have no soft turning points and seem to symbolize his acute reactions and pointed actions. While not the greatest of diplomats, he gets the job done with rough and sometimes truculent dispatch. He is determined, aggressive and frequently frustrated, because, as a mechanical perfectionist, he is often as hard on himself as he is on others.

The mixed or thread-connective form (number seven and number eight) is a polyglot confusion of the three other linkages. Thread connectives are often found in inarticulate, frequently illegible communication. Generally speaking, the vague, evasive designs of thread writing imply an equal vagueness and evasiveness in the writer. The mixed form often indicates an intuitive capacity on the part of the writer to melt into his--or, in the case of the sample below, her--surroundings. This girl's psychological behavior patterns can range from chameleonlike hypocrisy to pure and perfect empathy. She can be shrewd in one transaction and gulled in the next.

While the connective form indicates motivations, the pressure used to make the connections indicates the amount of energy behind the motivations. If you can just barely see or feel the braille impression of your writing tracks on the reverse side of the sheet of squiggles you copied, you expend an average or normal amount of psychophysical energy in getting your work done. (Hold the reverse side of the paper obliquely toward a light if you have trouble seeing the imprint of your writing.) Depending on your other handwriting indices, normal pressure could also signify that you are achieving a fairly good adjustment to life--that your mind-body organization is in equilibrium and you are not pressing too hard to make your points.

Now go back to the speed specimen you wrote, about the quick brown fox. Turn it over, rub your forefinger across the back and compare the braille with that of the squiggly lines. Your writing pressure should be much less in the speed sample than in the connective forms, which may have been difficult for you to imitate. If you compare both of these specimens with the pressure shown on your earlier three signatures, you should find that your signature pressure is similar to your speed-writing pressure. More than likely, your signature will show even less pressure than your speed writing. This is because whatever you do with the speed of habit is the most fluid and expressive projection of your graphic life style. Writing pressure does not reveal muscle power as much as it shows ego power.

If you are living in any kind of harmony with yourself, you don't give yourself a hard time writing your own name. But if you are your own most demanding critic, if you beat your brains out each day, there's a chance that your signature will show more pressure than the rest of your writing. Some people enjoy making a big impression with almost everything they do--even signing their name. Unconsciously, this show of strength gives them a feeling of fulfillment. Frequently, of course, self-fulfillment is only the brighter side of the coin of self-defense. In such a person, very heavy writing pressure can express anxiety, fear, frustration and aggression--an unconscious expenditure of energy devoted to protecting a defensive position against nameless intruders. This person is pressing for an advantage even when he writes his name.

Not surprisingly, graphologists regard the signature as an involuntary symbol of self, a sort of psychological calling card. If you've ever wondered why your signature varies in size from one day to another, you may now be close to having the answer. The size and pressure of your signature, which is the most visible, oft-repeated and best-remembered of all your handwriting traits, is a highly sensitive barometer of your feelings about yourself and the way you're living up to your own expectations. All of the previously mentioned handwriting observations apply to signatures, of course; and, in addition, the signature sometimes shows embellishments not found in the writer's ordinary script. Generally, a signature that shows a paraph--an underlining or flourish at the end, originally used as a safeguard against forgery--is the hallmark of a man on the make, dynamically and dramatically in search of excellence.

However, if your signature currently doesn't show a paraph, add one only at your peril: If it doesn't come naturally to you, it can be spotted as a contrivance.

Now go back to that handwriting specimen you executed at the beginning of this article. Remember, the professional handwriting analyst would rely on hundreds of distinct graphological variables, and I've discussed only a few of the most basic ones. Yet you ought by now to have enough information to at least take a stab at analyzing your own handwriting. Here are some of the indicators you'll want to look for:

The marginal frame (white space) you leave around your writing is descriptive of your over-all frame of reference. The more space you take on the page, the more room you need to project your ideas and your image into your surroundings.

The closer your words are to one another, the greater is your need for social relations; in other words, the more dependent you are on other people. The wider the gaps between your words, the more time you need for solitary activity. Wide gaps also bespeak the introspective tendencies of the creative artist.

The height of your middle zone is a critical variable. You've already learned that between one eighth of an inch and three millimeters is the normal range. If your middle zone is less than an eighth of an inch high, your ego probably needs a boost; if your middle zone is more than one half inch, you are probably egocentric, and you can certainly afford to spend less time on yourself and more time on those around you.

Slant represents your thrust into your environment. The farther you slant to the right (in a right-hander), the greater is your social instinct. A slant of 30 degrees or less from vertical indicates a commendable ability to get others to work for you; a slant of more than 45 degrees might mean excessive dependence on others, to a point where you may fall flat on your face. If your writing slants backward (again, in a right-hander), you're probably introspective, defensive or defiant--or all three. If you write straight up and down, you are probably a ramrod of independence.

The height and breadth of your letters indicate your self-confidence. Modesty and humility are reflected in medium height and width (about three millimeters). Repression and inhibition show up in tiny, squeezed script, while expanded letters mean abundant self-assurance.

Your over-all horizontal spread is another index of the relationship between you and your environment. The broader your letters, the more you respond emotionally to others and the more productive you are on a job.

If your words are made up of letter forms that show pronounced rhythmic regularity, chances are you are a person of considerable integrity and reliability. Irregular, unrhythmic forms often indicate some irresponsibility.

Are you unpretentious or ostentatious? An important clue is your tendency toward elaboration or simplification in your writing style. The more flourished and ornamented the writing, the more ostentatious you're likely to be. The more simple and economical your forms, the less you need the cover of an elaborate façade.

Although I can't caution sufficiently against making personality judgments from any single graphological variable, there's no doubt that the personal pronoun I takes on special significance in the assessment of ego strength. In English, the capital I is a most interesting word, because it represents only one thing: yourself. In fact, the ways your I and your signature vary in size, shape and dynamic thrust from day to day are probably the best indices on which to measure ego strength, goal orientation, dependability and determination. As you think and feel, so will you act and so will you write. The way you treat your signature and your I--the most dramatic symbols of your self-image--mirrors the way you project yourself into the world.

The few graphological conclusions you've been able to make about yourself probably coincide with things you had already suspected. In other words, the results appeal to common sense. There is no question in my mind that handwriting, properly interpreted, can provide solid and reliable insights into the writer's personality. Whether you're an executive responsible for hiring people, a professional man in need of better insights into your clients or just an ordinary person interested--as we all are--in the psychological make-up of yourself or the people around you, handwriting analysis might prove a very useful tool. But if you do elect to explore further in the science of graphology, be prepared to face the truth: The pen cannot lie; you are what you write.

• • •

Now that you've mastered the fundamentals of graphology--and tested their validity on your own writing--try your analytical hand at the following letters penned by four members of the fair sex to their boyfriends. If the lady in your life writes like one of these girls (whose letters have been reduced from 8-1/2"x 11"), the accompanying capsule sketch should provide you with useful insights into her personality; but if her style isn't covered here, make your own analysis. What you find out may confirm the high regard you have for her. If you should discover a trait you can't live with, however, you'd be wise in the future to sample the script of your prospective date--or mate--before you take the plunge.

(continued overleaf)

Susie should have been an actress; she loves the adulation of an audience. If you're on the receiving end of her histrionic skills, you may have some trouble separating the acts from the facts. But when she puts you on, it will usually be all in good fun. Because Susie isn't sure what she likes best, she has set up her own experimental theater of the living and loving arts. This is graphically expressed in the way she alternates the Greek e with the copybook E. Add to this her 35-degree slant from the base line of the "11" in finally and you get the feeling of a person who leans very far forward to please others. Her need to be all things to all people is shown in her personal pronoun I. She decides who she is by the feedback she extracts from those for whom she exhibits her skills and emotions. In her last sentence, the "y" of lonely and "g" of thing show the vast range of her libidinal outlets. When she's lonely, her drive is weak and frustrated; but when she's free to do her thing, she proves she is the liberated swinger she enjoys most.

Susie will do almost anything for a laugh; and if you're down in the dumps, you can depend on her to get you out. This is shown by the way many of her lines go uphill and by the pronounced upward thrust of her signature. But underneath her frivolous air, she needs a strong man to lean on and a broad shoulder to cry on (far-right slant of letters). To compound her dilemma of independence, she also shows an unconscious need to control those who are closest to her (arcade forms of "n" of lonely and "mm" of summary). The tightness of space between letters plus some left-tending forms in her Ms and Ns indicate an ambivalence that she manages to hide under a flibbertigibbet façade. Overall, she's a sensitive, sensuous girl (thick stroke of the script and full lower-zone loops) who thrives on the love of an attentive man.

Any man who enjoys a warmly affectionate woman will respond to Pat. Her handwriting is a fine example of the thick, sensuous stroke produced by the felt-nib pen and the soft, round, garland connective strokes that indicate receptivity, responsiveness and femininity. Pat's whole existence is controlled by her softhearted reactions to others. Her sentimental and romantic feelings about people, life and love are found in almost every graphic movement she makes: Her cuplike Ms and Ns are consistently duplicated at the beginnings and endings of words with similarly formed garland receptacles. Notice the saucerlike initial and terminal upsweeps in "me" and "for" at the end of the first line. Whenever she can, she unconsciously uses these pictorial expressions of the outward curved arms--which betoken acceptance, sincerity and dependence on others for material and emotional sustenance. Pat's need to intrude into the white spaces, together with her rocking-horse personal pronoun I, signifies that this young lady is quite dependent on the people in her life. Although her straight writing lines and the consistency of her graphic performance indicate that she is no chameleon, the collision of her libido (lower-zone forms) with her ego (middle-zone forms) means that she bends easily with current winds and whims. She wears her heart on her sleeve, hides the lump in her throat and tries her best to please every man she respects.

Despite her tenderness and compassion, however, she is a moral conformist and ethical idealist, and therefore presents a bit of a challenge. If you would pursue her, give her flowers and some Victorian traditionalism. Her life values are centered on tenderness and affection, with a firm foundation of material possessions. If you're not interested in providing all this, you'd better eschew the writing sorority whose graphics resemble this sample.

Julia's small but unaffected writing is proof that you can expect her to be sensitive to your needs and appreciative of your assets and good qualities. But if you aren't interested in mental activity, if social psychology--what makes people tick in groups--is not your thing, steer clear of the girls who write like Julia; they need constant intellectual stimulation with their erotic pleasure. They may look like easy marks, but they're mighty hard to please. Look at the beautifully balanced marginal frame that surrounds the well-organized body of her script. This indicates her basic artistic and cultural needs in living and loving. Like a sponge, she wants to sop up all the stimuli her environment can give her, so she unconsciously leaves wide marginal spaces at top and bottom, right and left. This represents her lebensraum but is also her invitation to you to share and contribute to her growth and fulfillment. These generous margins also display the respect she shows for the opinions of others, along with her desire to live and let live.

Unless your libido is varied and versatile in its range of performance, she will tire of you quickly; inexperienced men should not apply for her graces. Her many different kinds of lower-zone Fs, Gs, Ps and Ys symbolize a demand for drama and excitement in her sex life. The sharply arched forms of her Ms and Ns, together with a pattern of diminishing middle-zone letters in single words (e.g., message, express, answering), reveal the critical and analytical acumen of a woman who's been burned and who knows when she's being had. But her writing displays a definite thrust to the right and upward, indicating a future-oriented drive for self-actualization and positive gratification. So, if you're a serious guy looking for a wife, Julia is the intensely introspective and hopefully optimistic girl who can carry more than her share of the load.

Lucky the man with a girl like Carol. Of the four women whose handwritings we are analyzing here, she is the most spontaneous, outgoing extrovert. Carol is truly interested in men as they reflect all varieties of the human condition. While she may not thwart your efforts to bend her to your will and whim, she is her own woman; and she is an instinctively good selector. Notice the rather easygoing and unself-conscious use of the paper space. She sweeps over almost every inch of the background. Her figures and forms are not tight and conventional; they are free and nonconforming. Since her handwriting is a replica of her self-expression, you can expect Carol to be an honest realist and to follow her heartfelt feelings without too much inhibiting premeditation.

Her conversation will charm you, because she says what comes from her heart on the spur of the moment. She's not out to impress you as much as she is to get to know you, so you will find a naturally responsive relationship growing between you. A concept of envelopment applies to her life and love with you, just as her handwriting covers the paper. She doesn't consume it or gobble it up, but she knows how to use it to her best advantage. Her broad and expanded letters and words, plus the easy articulation of her personal pronoun I, prove that she is a truly secure woman with plenty of ego to share. She is neither jealous nor petty. None of her forms show a dangerous leftward tendency and none of her lines are compulsively straight and narrow. Therefore, she will allow you the same liberties she expects for herself, so you'll get essentially what you give. Although her conscience prevents her from luxuriating in profligate one-night stands, she recognizes that guilt is for monasteries. Carol is a warmly responsive and amorous young woman who's doing her best to let her libido take its course.