Spring Break
Traits of handwriting can tell about a person's personality
Molly Hamlett
Issue date: 11/16/06 Section: Features
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In fact, a few years ago, he switched to giving feedback in a bold, black, ink pen because students complained that the red looked too much like blood all over their papers.
Looking past the color and trying to figure out what has been written is easier said than done.
Some students say that it is hard to figure out what professors write on their papers. "It's nice not to have to second guess what the teacher is trying to write," said Jennifer Edwards, business sophomore.
Reading the comments on papers is not the only thing that causes students to squint, even if they have 20/20 vision. Board writing is often harder to make out than writing on paper. Several problems arise.
"Professors tend to write faster and messier on the board than on paper because they have so much to cover in a short period of time," said Joel Alejandre, music junior.
Angie Combs, philosophy and religion and psychology junior, was in Schmidt's Writing Across the Disciplines class. She said, "He's left-handed and so he wants you to see what he's writing through him." Students have this problem in the classroom of other professors who are also left-handed.
Reading handwriting is not the only thing students have trouble with. Quite a few professors might say students have trouble printing, but even more of problem writing in cursive.
Beth Sheppard, library director, said that some generations of students do not know how to write cursive because their grade schools exchanged teaching cursive for keyboarding classes. "I make a conscious effort to print words on the board instead of writing in cursive," she said.
Bo Webster, business senior, is in Eugene Wang's quantitative methods class. Wang is an assistant professor of business from China. "I think he translates some of his notes from Chinese to English as he lectures. Sometimes it looks like he writes Chinese instead of English," Webster said with a laugh. Many of Wang's students have compared his handwriting to a doctor's stereotypical signature.
The study of handwriting, or graphology, dates back to the 17 century.
Some may think that handwriting analysis is only good for proving forgeries in a courtroom. In truth, handwriting has always been believed to be a window to the true character of an individual, with each trait apparent by a graphic sign.
Here are 10 tips taken from Handwriting Analysis: Putting It to Work for You by Andrea McNichol and Handwriting Analysis by Karen Kristin Amend and Mary Stansbury Ruiz, compiled by Martha Brockenbrough, submitted to The Collegian by Wang. These indications of handwriting will have you watching and analyzing your own letters as you write.
Molly Hamlett is a sophomore in communication. She can be e-mailed at molly.hamlett@sckans.edu.
Notable traits in handwriting and their meanings
1. Are your U's and W's rounded on their bottoms? You're sensitive and maybe poetic
2. Do you cross your T's in the middle or at the top? The lower you cross your T, the less ambition you have.
3. Do you loop your C's at the top? Then, to quote Carly Simon, "You're so vain."
4. Are you're A's and O's tightly closed? Perhaps you're hiding something.
5. Do your letters slant every which way? If so, then yikes. Only 10 percent of the general population has a wobbly slant-compared with 70 to 80 percent of convicted felons.
6. Do you have the "felon's claw"? It's another hallmark of the criminal, and it occurs when you bring a letter straight down, then attach a claw-shaped curve to its end-say when you're writing the lowercase y.
7. Is your signature different from your regular handwriting? Then perhaps you're putting on an act.
8. Do the connecting swoops between your letters droop? Maybe you have a martyr complex, and are carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.
9. Is your handwriting spiky and angular? Relax. There's no need to be so tense.
10. Are your letters a bit squatty? If they're biggest in the middle zone, and don't extend much up or below the baseline, then you're perhaps a bit childish. The Disney logo, based on Walt Disney's handwriting, is a good example of this.
by Andrea McNichol, Karen Kristin Amend and Mary Stansbuty Ruiz
The pictures are the answers to our question below asked in the printed paper
Professors' handwriting examples: Can you guess whose handwriting is whose?
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