Any advice on how to improve my penmanship / handwriting? (1 Viewer)

[Ashley Seymour]

Do serial killers have above-average penmanship when compared to the general public? Maybe I can get a degree in the humanities using this...
What do you consider above-average penmanship? Seems like a relative term to me. What traits set serial killer off from other "normal" people or at least people who are not killers. Profilers study forensic evidence to try to give a description and method of behavior in order to catch a killer. Why would not a combination of these traits not be evident in the handwriting?
Jonathan, I read the link and it appears that he is setting up a straw man to knock down. There will always be people who try to claim more of handwriting analysis than is reasonable to assume. Same for lie detector machines which an article in the paper recently said were not effective in screening employees, or criminals.
I look at a long of handwriting, but I never put it to the uses as mentioned above. The closes I have come is when as a bank loan officer, I declined a loan called in by a car dealer. The potential borrowers handwriting indicated a degree of vanity. His credit report was not good and he was protesting to the F&I manager that there were mistakes on his report. My interpretation was that if he got the loan that he would not feel responsible about making timely payments. If the loan went late it would be easy for him to blame others for problems beyond his control. The vanity trait was not a negative in its own right, but couples with the credit and the attitude conveyed by the salesman it was enough to sway my opinion.
If you were to get a copy of the handwriting of a Priest, or anyone who would be around children, and it showed a perversion in the sex drive, would you be skeptical and dismiss it. One caveat is that often Priests have a bit of deviency in their writing. After all, celebicy is a bit perverse. Like in the example above, a trait is not in and of itself good or bad, but it has to be taken together with all the other traits of an individual.

 

[Jonathan Burk]

So where was the "straw man"? Vanity, perverseness, and deviancy aren't reflected in any way in handwriting, either. You were basing your judgements on factors other than handwriting (the credit report for the loan, and the hubbub about some priests doing perverse things that is so prevelant in the news).
I would never allow superstition to affect my judegement about someone, mostly because I'm a Gemini, and we don't do that.
But don't take my word for it.
From James Randi:

On my 1991 U.K. TV series for Granada, "James Randi, Psychic Investigator," I tested the abilities of Britain's number one graphologist, Duncan McIntosh. He was to match five samples of handwriting to five women who were from very different professions — computer specialist, secretary, artist, farmer, and salesperson, after interviewing them and examining the randomized samples. Mr. McIntosh had described this as the sort of thing he could do with great accuracy. As the laws of chance alone would dictate, he got one right out of five.
http://www.randi.org/jr/07-13-01.html

You've obviously chosen to believe in "graphology" for whatever reason, Ashley, but I just didn't want someone else to read this thread and assume that it is an accepted form of personality divination.
As an additional note, things of this nature aren't too hard to test. You can take several samples of your own handwriting (copying something out of a magazine, as mentioned earlier), and send it to several different graphologists. You could then observe how closely their observations resemble each other, and get a good idea on how accurate this technique is.

 

[Ashley Seymour]

I am not the one who is claiming healing, diagnostic abilities, and in-depth psychoanaysis attributes to handwriting analysis. I do not believe in the extroadinary claims made for graphoanalysis. I have taken Meyers and Briggs surveys and find them interesting, but limited in their predictive value in job and personal matters.

Regarding the comment on the straw man argument, Randi picked five women in diverse occupations and asked a "renouned" graphoanalyst in the UK to match the handwriting after the opportunity to meet with the women. He assumes that the five occupations require certain specific psychological characteristics. People have most of their character traits in place before entering an occupation. What character traits would you look for in a computer programer, or a farmer for instance? There is likely to be more variance among farmers than between famer - computer programer occupations. The "supposed" test is not scientific. Under scrutiny it may be correct, but not the one quoted example presented here.

I agree that my decision on the loan was based on credit only. The only part the "vanity" writing played was for me to not look deeper into the reason for the poor credit. Most people have pride in their credit rating and would be indignant if there were mistakes. Someone who has an inflated opinion of him/herself may tend to blame others for their own failings. I think the handwriting played a rather minor part in my decision and it was the only one I could recount based on thousands of credit decisions.

I do remember two examples where I found that a wife had forged her husbands signature. Here my suspicion was aroused because the writing had feminine characteristics. I was able to cross reference with other signitures on file to confirm the forgery.

I don't make major claims for the efficacy of handwriting analysis, otherwise I would pursue a career in this field. I think the criticism comes when a single trait is blown up to represent person's total personality. When I mentioned vanity, that is not intended to be a possitive or negative trait. I had an employer who had a large vanity letter in his signature. Vanity in handwriting means excessive pride in ones accomplishments, and a tendency to expect others to do things for you. He was very successful in sales and also has a talk radio show. His vanity in probably instrumentas in his success. Our local mayor has a vanity letter in his name. One of his responsibilities is to delegate and to expect others to work for him. I don't consider vanity to be a negative trait in these two instances and are merely individual parts of their personality.

My original issue with penmanship examples is that the way the letters are made may be the complete opposite to a writers established style. If one doesn't accept that the way we write reflects our personality, then it should't be that hard to change how we make our letters. Fine, go ahead and good luck.

 

[Sam Posten]

Answer to the original question: Check out the book 'Drawing on the right side of the brain'.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846
Allegedly the exercises will help you identify ways to improve your artistic/drawing skills and, almost hand in hand, your penmanship.
I bought the book, found it fascinating, but never dedicated the necessary time to the exercises. Someday....
Sam

 

[Jason_Els]

Hire a Catholic nun who teaches in parochial school to tutor you for an hour or two each week. You will be amazed at how good your penmanship becomes. God I hated those penmanship workbooks but they DRILL good handwriting into you like nothing else will. I'm completely serious.

 

[Bill Cowmeadow]

___________
The potential borrowers handwriting indicated a degree of vanity. His credit report was not good and he was protesting to the F&I manager that there were mistakes on his report. My interpretation was that if he got the loan that he would not feel responsible about making timely payments. If the loan went late it would be easy for him to blame others for problems beyond his control.
___________

And I suppose if the applicant had the perfect penmanship according to the scale you were judging it by, he/she would have qualified for the loan. Trollop!

 

[Ashley Seymour]

And I suppose if the applicant had the perfect penmanship according to the scale you were judging it by, he/she would have qualified for the loan. Trollop!
Maybe, or maybe not, but I might have wanted to investigate why the credit was late. If I had not seen the signature at all and was meeting face to face with the prospective borrow, my decision would have been the same. If I was looking for a reason to investigate further I was disuaded by the comments of the F&I manager and what I interpreted the attitude of the borrow would be in the future.
You are making your own value judgement when you say write "perfect penmanship." As I said before, vanity is neigher a positive nor a negative trait.
Perhaps someone who writes slowly and deliberatly is making an attempt to be respectful to other who will have to read the writing. Fast and sloppy writing may indicate intelligence. It may also indicate impatience, lack of respect, frustration and many other traits. A psychologist would not formulate a conclusion about a person without spending some time talking with, testing, or whatever was necessary for the purpose at hand.
My credit challenged friend might have come back in a year and have much improved his report. Vanity or no, I would be justified to make the loan. Different circumstance, different decision.
Just watched Red Dragon last night. I was quite intrigued by the writing of the killer. It looked like the director made an effort to make the writing consistant with the psychology of the killer. Of course even here liberties were taken. In Hannibal I was disappointed because in a scene where you looked over his shoulder as he composed a letter, it showed quite elegant penmanship. It was not believable to me.