Student column: What does your writing say about you?

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Writing is something everybody does almost every day of their lives. Usually people don’t pay much attention to what their writing looks like. But what most people don’t know is that your writing can tell a little bit about your personality.

Aristotle once said, “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same speech sounds, so all men have not the same writing.”

I remember when I was in middle school and during our homeroom, we always did activities. Analyzing our handwriting was one of the activities that we did. I remember going around to all of my friends and asking them what their handwriting said about them. It was kind of fun to see what our handwriting could tell about our personality and if it was accurate. Some of them were inaccurate but others were spot-on. It must have been a fun activity if it stuck with me through all the time that has passed between now and then.

Here are just some examples of how you can analyze your own handwriting. The size of your writing is an indicator to your personality, according to Buzzle.com. If your write tall, you are ambitious, observant, and farsighted. If you write small, you are very analytical, modest, reserved, obedient and meticulous. Writing broad and wide suggests you have a desire to travel and are boastful, imaginative, friendly, spontaneous and social. A person who writes very large likes to be noticed and stands out in a crowd. Narrow writing indicates that the person has self-control and self-discipline and is timid and suspicious.

Most of us when we write on paper without any lines on it have some trouble creating a baseline to write straight. If you have a baseline that is normally straight, it indicates the writer needs control of his/her life in order to be comfortable. When the baseline ascends to the rights, it says the person is optimistic, has faith in his/her future, and feels loved and joyous. If a writer has a descending slant, it indicates fatigue, discouragement, or depression or illness. If a writer has an arc-like baseline, it means they jump into a project enthusiastically, but as the project wears on, they tend to give up and leave things unfinished. If the baseline is concave, the writer lacks confidence or purpose in a project, but as it goes on, they overcome the negativity and it becomes easy to finish.

While some of these theories about what your handwriting tells about you are accurate, some may not be. If you would like to try this out for yourself, grab a piece of unlined paper and a pen, and write an original passage that is at least 100 characters long. Handwriting analysis, or graphology, is known as a scientific discipline to asses one’s personality. While it is a professional practice, you can also use it for your self-assessment and improvement.

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