Would you let an expert analyse your handwriting?
Posted by Ellee on Nov 28, 2006 in Uncategorized | 17 commentsYou might try to fake your body language, but your handwriting won’t fool the experts. George Osborne must have been over the moon when during 
a heated debate, an angry George Brown hurled some papers across the Commons and they landed in his lap. Little did he know how revealing they would be.
A sheet with some scribbles was dispatched to Sarah Mooney, (pic) principal of the London College of Graphology, whose analysis of Brown’s 14 word note painted a less than flattering picture of our Chancellor, describing him as thus:
“The writer is not shy. The writer shows unreliable and poor judgment. The writer was not in control of their emotions and instincts at the time of writing.
“There are signs that the writer is someone who does not like to give a clear-cut image of himself. There are signs that the writer can be evasive.�
It is spot on.
Although I prefer our politicians to avoid using these personal attacks, I can understand how George Osborne found this irresistible. After all, you can’t disguise the way you dot your “i” and cross your “t”, your whole character is laid bare, your writing can reveal far more than you would wish in the hands of the right person.
If our Shadow Chancellor believes in graphology, shouldn’t we be asking our political candidates to have their writing analysed? Has your writing ever been analysed, how true do you think it would be? And why wouldn’t George Osborne give a sample of his own to The Times?
Here are some analyses which you may find of interest – Frank Sinatra, Jack the Ripper, Stalin and Himmler.
Paul, I also don’t like personal attacks of this kind, they are totally unncessary, we should never underestimate the intelligence of the electorate, they can judge for themselves.
I look forward to seeing transcripts of the handwriting of some Conservative MP’s!
In all honesty Ellee this is pseudo Daily Mail-style stuff! In any case this incident, and the autism gibe, says more about George Osborne than it does about Gordon Brown!
Courtney, we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I’ve already pointe out above the main reason why people are so against graphology in this country.
Graphology is an accepted branch of psychology ( or do you disagree with that discipline as well)
Jeremy,
Graphology is used in commerce for employment profiling, in the same way that lie-detectors are used on the Ricky Lake Show.
Both lie-detecting and graphology have no scientific basis, that is why graphological evidence is rejected in a court of law.
Don’t take my word for it, can you name me a court case where a conviction was based soley on graphological evidence?
It’s widely used in commerce rather thn law. More so on the Continent. You don’t get a job in France without writing a letter by hand. Look at any job ad in a French newspaper.
Curmudgeon you’re wrong. Graphologists use handwriting to determine all sorts of things from illness to suitability for a particular role.
I’m not sure about the point you raised. A graphologist may determine that a person using the keyboard a lot!
I don’t know that “graphology” is “widely used” in the U.S. — just becuse I’m contrary I ran the word through Westlaw and found exactly no Illinois cases in which the word was even used.
Handwriting experts are recognized — but not to determine personality — only to determine if this disputed signature is really the signature of the person in question.
And anyway — given that we spend all of time typing away on keyboards these days… wouldn’t it be safe to say that all of our handwriting has deteriorated to the point where it would make some of your horrible exemplars (I did look) seem neat and tidy by comparison?
Just asking….
Tim Worstalls comments are misguided and completely wrong. In my experience,people like him who object to it, are either a) scared, and don’t want to be found out for who they are, or b)are psychologists who’ve found out that an income can be derived from handwriting analysis. Many graphologists do just that, and most are qualified.(the best tend to be a little psychic)
Graphology is extremely accurate and is widely used on the Continent and the US. British culture tends to squirm away from anything that smacks of the abstract. It prefers emperical evidence on matters.
Analysis of handwriting might reveal things that you didn’t want. It’s like superstitious people visiting a medium.
I wonder if they could make heads or tails out of shorthand. It might be intereseting to find out.
I agree with Tim and Courtney. I put it in the same bracket as astrology and palm-readers!
I now have arthritis in my fingers so my handwriting is awful! So no way would I allow it to be analysed now. I understand that, in the days when we all wrote job applications by hand, companies routinely had applicants’ handwriting analysed. Glad those days have gone!
Steve, My handwriting was pretty neat until I started writing in shorthand, and now it is almost indecipherable. What would a graphologist make of that, because my personality hasn’t changed, even though my writing has?
This is interesting and scary at the same time. I can see someone in the news media running with an analysis of someone’s writing like it was gospel. Hope they don’t check my poor penmanship (grin)
Will George Osborne be submitting examples of his hand writing anonymously to the same ‘expert’ for comparative purposes? It seems only fair.
I fear the results would be too similar though!
I just popped ou to get some lunch and saw a similar report in the Sun, I was going to write about it, but you beat me to it!
Still, it is funny though. A great clunking fist from a moody evasive great clunking pratt.
It will be interesting to see if George can get Gordon to lose his temper at will.
I’m with Tim on this one – reminds me of lie-detectors, very interesting data, but not admissible as evidence in a court of law – so, useless.
I once had mine analysed and I found it very revealing – wish I could find the report it would make good reading 16 years on.