The study of handwriting and handwriting analysis is now an accepted and increasingly used technique for assessment of people in organizations. Handwriting analysis is an effective and reliable indicator of personality and behaviour, and so is a useful tool for many organizational processes, for example: recruitment, interviewing and selection, team-building, counselling, and career-planning.

Theory and history

A person’s handwriting – the script – and its placing on the page express the unique impulses of the individual: logically, the brain sends signals along the muscles to the writing implement they control. By examining a handwriting sample, an expert graphologist is able to identify relevant features of the handwritten script, and the way the features interact. The features, and interaction between them, provide the information for the analysis. (No single handwriting sample will exhibit all 300 different features of course – a typical analysis will involve far less).

It is the combination of features, and the interaction between them that enable a full and clear interpretation.

Graphology is a very old and respected science – the study of handwriting and its analysis was first developed by the Chinese 3,000 years ago. The Romans used graphology, and through the centuries since then various civilizations and cultures have analysed handwriting to identify the essence of the person who produced it.