Handwriting as Characterization

"Audrey, that rightward slant in your handwriting indicates a romantic nature. A heart that yearns, be careful."

— Dale Cooper, Twin Peaks

Just as a person's accent or speech patterns can provide insights into their personality, so can something like their handwriting. For instance:

• A meticulous, refined person could have neat handwriting (and in more recent works, use cursive near-exclusively).
• Smart characters, especially doctors, are often portrayed as having messy handwriting. This is based on the idea that thinking faster may cause one to write faster and therefore less legibly — while this is the case for some people, there is no direct correlation between one's intelligence and handwriting legibility.
• A person who writes certain letters in a reversed fashion may either be portrayed as someone with childish whimsy or is a literal child themselves.

In Real Life, this discipline is called "graphology", the inference of one's personality from their handwriting — though it is considered a pseudoscience at best.

Supertrope to The Illegible. See also Art Reflects Personality.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You: Yaku's handwriting consists of an ancient form of Japanese writing that gets dubbed "chicken scratch from hell". Which makes sense, as she's an 89-year-old Yamato Nadeshiko. The only other person able to read it is Naddy, who lived a Yamato Nadeshiko lifestyle in her youth before she became a reverse Occidental Otaku.
• The Dangers in My Heart: Ichikawa’s handwriting is well refined, befitting his studious and intelligent nature. Yamada’s handwriting is, well... god-awful and just literate, befitting her more carefree personality and her clumsiness. It’s so bad that Ichikawa’s sister mistook a note Yamada left at their house for a dude’s writing, and not the girl her brother was video chatting with.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: Kosaku is a lower-ranking salaryman who writes in clear, but off-kilter kanji. Yoshikage Kira, who impersonates the man, finds the task of copying his handwriting to be tedious.
• Sailor Moon: At the end of the Black Moon arc of the manga (and Crystal), Neo Queen Serenity sends her daughter Chibiusa back to Usagi and Mamoru in the 20th century to complete her Sailor Guardian training along with a note. Her handwriting is cutesy and somewhat childish (she even signs the note with a little doodle of herself), showing how despite her regal demeanor, she's not that much different from Usagi, her present-day self, deep down.

Fan Works

• A Load of Bulk: Lana misspells many words because she is only six years old.

Film — Animation

• Toy Story:
  • Toy Story: Andy labels Woody with the letter N in his name reversed while Buzz's label has the N oriented normally, showing how much Andy had grown in between getting Woody (when he was a very young kid) and getting Buzz (when he was six years old).
  • Toy Story 3: Ken writes in pink and dots his "I"s with hearts, which ties into him being In Touch with His Feminine Side.

Film — Live-Action

• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: The first time Sherlock Holmes meets Professor Moriarty, he asks for an autograph, then conducts an on-the-spot graphological analysis:
  Holmes: The upward strokes on the 'p', the 'j', the 'm', indicate a genius level intellect, while the flourishes in the lower zone denote a highly creative, yet meticulous nature... but if one observes the overall slant and the pressure of the writing, there's suggestion of acute narcissism, a complete lack of empathy, and a pronounced inclination toward—
  Moriarty: No.
  Holmes: Moral insanity.
• The Talented Mr. Ripley: Discussed. Tom Ripley analyzes Dickie Greenleaf's handwriting, noting that his letters not touching the line they are written on are a sign of vanity. This is more than a casual observation on Tom's part, as he is skilled in forging people's handwriting and signatures, something he uses when assuming Dickie's identity after murdering him.
• Zodiac: Invoked, discussed, and inverted as various suspects' written samples are compared and evaluated with the original killer's published letters by a graphologist — he concludes that some samples match better than there are other evidences that point to that specific suspect. To make matters worse, one of the suspects is ambidextrous while another is a cinema's poster designer and calligraphist while the letters themselves have an iconographic cipher.

Literature

• Dark Places: Libby mentions that she has very "blocky" handwriting, which is implied to be representative of her Womanchild and stunted nature. Libby describes Patty's handwriting as "cramped", which is fitting for someone who had no time and was permanently overwhelmed by the failing farm. Her scummy father Rooster has "tiny, frenetic, pointy" handwriting, worthy of such an unpleasant, nasty, and desperate person, who's always trying to scam everyone, even his one surviving daughter.
• Dirty Bertie: All of the main kid characters write messily and misspell a lot of words. This is because they're all either six or seven, and Bertie in particular is a bad student.
• Double Act by Jacqueline Wilson is told from the perspective of twin sisters Ruby and Garnet, writing alternating diary entries in an old accounts book. A difference in handwriting is depicted by the font; Ruby's entries have plain font while Garnet's entries are italicised. Dramatic, extroverted Ruby isn't interested in schoolwork and doesn't care about her handwriting so long as it's readable. Bookish, introverted Garnet aspires to be a writer and has much neater handwriting.
• Gordon Brittas: Sharing the Dream: A brief glimpse of Colin's attempts to copy out the Whitbury New Town Leisure Centre Safety Manual depicts his writing style as scrawly and difficult to read, an indicator of Colin's status as The Ditz.
• The Grace of Kings: Good calligraphy is considered a mark of refinement and is judged in the qualifying exams for state office. The scholar Lügo Crupo is renowned for the beauty of his writing as well as for the elegance and intelligence of his words — both of which conceal a morally bankrupt character.
• Harry Potter: Ron's handwriting is always described as an "untidy scrawl", fitting his sometimes sloppy personality, while Hermione's is always neat, per her characterization as an overachieving perfectionist.
• Ramona Quimby: Ramona's tendency to draw on her letters (drawing cat ears onto her last initial, for instance, and putting frowny faces on her O's) ties into her being a Ms. Imagination. Her misspelling her name in earlier books (first with a slew of "I"s and "T"s, then as "Ranoma") characterises her as a very young girl.

Live-Action TV

• Cheers: Played for Hypocritical Humor. Cliff asks Frasier if it's possible to discern personality traits from a person's signature. Frasier dismisses it as junk psychology, then gets a glimpse of Cliff's signature and freaks out.
• CSI: In "The I-15 Murders" a message reading "Iv'e killed five women. Catch me if you can?" is found on various bathroom stall doors all along the titular highway. Based on the incorrect punctuation, the way the letters are slanted, and other clues, a graphologist says the writer is poorly educated, left-handed, female, and prone to criminal activity. All of these characteristics turn out to be accurate, although the writer is the actual killer's girlfriend/accomplice.
• Gilmore Girls:
  • Discussed in season 2's "Back in the Saddle Again," when the girls notice the specials board at Luke's has been changed to reflect a new dish. Lorelai notes that the handwriting is "so precise, so determined" and approves it as "focused-Luke." Rory informs her that it's Jess's handwriting, and she knows because he's been writing marginalia in her books. Lorelai quickly takes back her assessment of the handwriting by guessing that the notes are things like "play basketball, eat a sandwich," as she doesn't have a high opinion of Jess.
  • A variation in season 3's "Lorelai Out Of Water," when Rory scolds Lorelai for not getting rid of the junk in their garage two years earlier as promised. Lorelai retorts she called guys to remove it but got bored waiting for them and went to get coffee. She insists she left a note, but Rory points out they didn't know whether the note was authentic. Lorelai defends herself: "I wrote it on Powerpuff Girls stationery. Who'd he think was setting him up, Hello Kitty?"
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: A Running Gag on the show is that Mac idolizes Philadelphia Phillies player Chase Utley and is constantly writing fan letters to him. When the letters are displayed onscreen, it's shown that Mac's handwriting looks like that of a pre-teen, befitting his Manchild personality.
• Monk: Monk's handwriting is so neat and consistent that it's sometimes confused for being typed.
• Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger: In #31, the placards the monarchs hold show characters they wrote that complemented their respective personalities; for example, the delinquent-like Yanma wrote his in a jagged hand, the elegant Hymeno wrote hers in neat cursive, and Kaguragi, the leader of the Japan-like land of Toufu wrote his in a calligraphy-like manner.

Video Games

• Borderlands: Brick's Dumb Muscle status in the first game is shown by his childlike scrawled handwriting.
• The New Order Last Days Of Europe: One of the signs of Sergei Taboritsky's Sanity Slippage is his diary's increasingly messy handwriting. As he approaches his inevitable Death by Despair, his frantic notes become almost impossible to decipher save for his Madness Mantras.
• Persona 3: The letter Bebe sends to the protagonist in the epilogue is noted to be written with an unsteady hand, which is explained as him not being used to writing in Japanese characters.
• Plants vs. Zombies: The zombies' notes to the player all have sloppy, crude handwriting, in addition to poor spelling and grammar. This is fitting because they're all unintelligent creatures. In contrast, their leader, Dr. Zomboss, writes in a cursive font with eloquent language, making it clear that he's vastly smarter than his minions.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers: The childish and emotional Wigglytuff writes in a "messy scrawl", which Chatot struggles to read when tasked — showcasing the personality differences between the partners.

Web Comics

• Daughter of the Lilies: Demonstrated when the crew sign a poster for a young fan. Team Dad Orrig's writing is plain and clear; the Cultural Rebel Lad-ette elf Lyra has a surprisingly neat cursive (but writes differently with her left hand); and the Book Dumb but kind-hearted Brent gets the N backwards as he struggles to write his name.
• Schlock Mercenary: The print copy of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries includes handwritten margin notes by a number of the comic's characters. The Book Dumb captain Kaff Tagon has notably sloppier handwriting than his father the general, while the Sophisticated as Hell Murtagh's is very neat and tidy. Manchild Schlock uses a marker.

Web Videos

• Rats SMP: El is one of the few rats who can write (in "Human") for much of the series, and is the go-to scribe whenever the rats have to leave Forged Messages to the humans. It's suggested that her "passable for human" and implicitly good handwriting is a remnant of her noble upbringing.

Western Animation

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Piandao is both a Master Swordsman and a Warrior Poet with expertise in many arts, including calligraphy, which he sees as a way to focus the mind. His apprentice Sokka doesn't even attempt calligraphy but wins Piandao's approval for his out-of-the-box thinking instead.
  Piandao: Remember, you cannot take back a stroke of the brush, or a stroke of the sword.
• King of the Hill: Bill Dauterive's signature is his first name in block letters and his last name in cursive, as he is a slob but proud of his roots.
• The Loud House:
  • Leni and Lola write in cursive and dot their eyes with hearts, which fits with them being The Fashionista and a little girl in a Princess Phase, respectively. Also, Leni often misspells words because she's a Dumb Blonde.
  • Flip tends to misspell words, which fits with his Book Dumbness.
• Molly of Denali: In "Picking Cloudberries," Grandpa Nat's handwriting is shown to be very swift, can be hard to read in some places, and is in cursive. His Native name ('Nehtan Kon,' which means 'lightning') was given because he's quick, he's a scientist and is thus highly intelligent, and he was educated during a time when cursive was considered the norm for handwriting. He's also aware of all of this and makes sure Molly can read his handwritten directions before she sets out on her hike.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: "Fame and Misfortune" reveals that each of the Mane 6 had a different way of writing in their friendship journal. For three of them, this involved their handwriting reflecting their personalities: Fluttershy wrote very small as to avoid taking up too much space; Rarity wrote in perfect calligraphy, and Rainbow Dash wrote with so much passion she left rips in the paper.
• The Simpsons: In "Bart the Genius", the school counselor suspects that Bart is forging Homer's signature on permission slips because of the childish handwriting, but then he receives a check that Homer just signed and it matches the "forged" signatures exactly. This shows how uneducated and immature Homer is.

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