The Dynamics of Handwriting Printed Characters

Abstract

The way we handwrite characters is a deeply individual matter, as bank tellers who ask for your signature and graphologists who claim to be able to study your personality from your handwriting know well. The handwriting samples that they work with are static, in the sense that they consider the trace left behind well after the signature is formed, and thus are at one remove from the person who actually did the original writing. In this sense, any attempts to identify an individual, let alone to claim to reconstruct aspects of their personalities, have the flavor of archaeological digs.