Handwriting

The art of calligraphy has all but perished from the earth and is only kept alive, gasping for its last few wheezing breaths, in a few lacunae of historical preservation societies, or perhaps in the side streets of Far Eastern nations where men delicately attend to each stroke of ancient alphabets like a bonsai tree owner would to his arboreal project.  Nonetheless, the digitization of language transmission has obfuscated the detail-oriented care taken to produce great works of literature.  Perhaps that is why there are fewer great luminaries of literature today – the necessity for the attention to detail, even in the pen stroke is quite obsolete.  I am not recommending anyone take a sledgehammer to their laptop or use it in a physics experiment about vectors and gravitational acceleration as they toss it from an upper story window.  I am remarking that the attention to detail in handwriting seemed to at least embellish texts with some intellectual fecundity.  Example at hand:  the Declaration of Independence is a remarkable piece of literary work, whether one agrees with its tenets, premises and syllogisms or not.  Aside from studying the meaning of the text itself, one could also study the extraordinary style of handwriting used to actually scribe the text.  A rare few men could reproduce such phenomenal handwriting today (of course, that may have been the case in the late 18th century as well, if one compares Timothy Matlack’s handwriting – the actual penman of the Declaration of Independence - with others who signed the document).  But at least, I think, excellent handwriting reveals the penman’s great reverence for the power of words, although I don’t know what this says about doctors and their stereotypical handwriting that looks more like hieroglyphs – perhaps an interpretive dance would be a more effective means of communication for doctors with poor handwriting than a signature or prescription with marks that could barely pass for Sanskrit characters.  Gutenberg assuredly had the noblest of intentions in mind with his printing press and the mass production of literature, chiefly scripture, but the as the scriptoriums faded into obscurity, perhaps along with them was the austere reverence for the scribed word.  

Graphology is the study of handwriting, particularly in a way that is meant to reveal subconscious characteristics about the penman (or penperson, to be more inclusive and not veil any pretense of misogyny, of course).  Slant of letters, overall pressure, and extenuated flourishes of certain letters can all be analyzed.  For example, a small heart in the place of the dot on the letter ‘i’ would most likely indicated a young female with a gregarious personality…is that misogynistic?  This is certainly not an exact science, but that is, of course, assuming that science is always exact, with unbiased scientists, which is, of course, not the case.  Thankfully, handwriting ability and respect for texts are not inversely proportional.  I think if my handwriting were to be analyzed alongside all other living creatures, I would find myself somewhere between the categories of “well-trained chimpanzee” and “toddler just learning to distinguish between letters.”