What Your Handwriting Says About You

Graphology is a pseudoscience with a few avid followers and a few avid rejecters, in which handwriting is analysed to determine personality.  Thus far, it is not considered to be a valid source of personality profiling.  Though I’m not sure of its validity, graphology looked interesting, so I looked up the basics.

Hemingway's handwriting.  Source

Pressure

The amount of pressure applied while writing apparently indicates the emotional energy of the writer.  The more pressure is applied, the more vitality and mental endurance they have.  Ergo, they can put a lot of energy into tasks without completely draining themselves and are mostly successful.  On the other side of the range, someone who applies little pressure doesn’t have so much energy and tends to avoid emotionally draining events.

Slant

The slant of the writer’s letters indicates the response to emotion.  If the letters slant right (/), the writer reacts strongly to emotion, i.e. heart rules mind.  If the letters are vertical (|), the writer does not react to emotion easily, i.e. mind rules heart.  If the letters slant left (\) the writer shows no emotions.

Base Line

If sentences slant upwards as they proceed (this only works on unlined paper), it could mean a generally upbeat or optimistic nature of the writer, while a downwards slant could mean a generally down or pessimistic outlook.  Very straight lines could mean that the writer is overly disciplined or tense.

Apparently, these things can differ depending on the mood of the person as well, so for an accurate analysis, a series of writings over a period of time is required.

There are other things like spacing and size, but for now, this is it.  What does your handwriting say about you?  (And is it even remotely accurate?)

For more info on this, go here.  It is also the source for my post. 

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The Myers-Briggs Personality Types

The Myers-Briggs Type indicator was originally derived by Katharine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers.  In turn, they used Carl Jung’s writings in the 1921 book Psychological Types.

These days, it is used to determine what kind of psychological preferences someone has.  It was originally used to determine what types of jobs women in World War II could do best and most comfortably, but this was later rebuffed and now it is used only as an indicator for personality.

There are 16 types, denominated by a combination of four letters:

Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I), Sensing (S) or Intuition (N), Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), and Judgement (J) or Perception (P).

Every person is dominant on one side of the four scales and the combination of dominant traits then determines the personality type.

Extraversion or Introversion

People who lean to extraversion focuses on the outside world; things, people, actions.  Those who lean to introversion channels their focus inward, reflecting, ideas and beliefs.

Sensing or Intuition

Those with dominance in sensing prefer to deal with facts, details and things that are certain; they trust information gotten from their 5 senses.  Those who lean toward intuition like to add meaning to information and find things that aren’t obvious; they listen to their inner voice and trust insight.

Thinking or Feeling

Those who prefer thinking make decisions by using objective logic and an analytical approach, while those who prefer feeling look to their values, the needs of themselves and the other people and beliefs.

Judgement or Perception

Those who prefer judgement want their lives to be stable and decided while those who prefer perception want flexibility and new options.

Each in combination forms a unique personality type.  A free test is available here.

I find it useful to divide my characters into personality types if I struggle to differentiate between them.  I use it as a base to work from, giving me a clearer image of who this person is.

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