On this episode, we explore what you can learn about a person based on handwriting alone. A handwriting analyst for more than 30 years, Dale Roberts of Write Insights analyzed the handwriting of the Curiosity staff and joined us on the podcast to explain his process. Play along at home while you listen! Write the sentence "I'm truly happy to be here today at the party" in print and in cursive, then follow along during the episode to analyze your handwriting and decide for yourself how accurate it is. Among other things, co-author of "Handwriting Analysis 101" Dale Roberts discusses: Why handwriting analysis works and why people are skeptical of its effectiveness. The upper, middle, and lower "zones" of handwriting analysis and what they can tell you about a writer's personality. How to identify specific personality traits, including but not limited to: the strength of your relationship with your parents; how skeptical, risk-averse, ambitious, or motivated you are; whether a person is stubborn, outspoken, frugal, detail-oriented, or dislikes being in big crowds; and how men and women feel about the opposite sex. Additional resources discussed: Write Insights "Handwriting Analysis 101" Paper Personality -- Barry Beyerstein All About Graphology | Skeptoid Podcast Do differences in sex hormones affect handwriting style? Evidence from digit ratio and sex role identity as determinants of the sex of handwriting Bad Handwriting: A Gender Thing? What Does a Certified Forensic Document Examiner Do? Which Presidents Were Left-Handed? Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
On this episode, we explore what you can learn about a person based on handwriting alone. A handwriting analyst for more than 30 years, Dale Roberts of Write Insights analyzed the handwriting of the Curiosity staff and joined us on the podcast to explain his process.
Play along at home while you listen! Write the sentence "I'm truly happy to be here today at the party" in print and in cursive, then follow along during the episode to analyze your handwriting and decide for yourself how accurate it is. Among other things, co-author of "Handwriting Analysis 101" Dale Roberts discusses:
Additional resources discussed:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/what-does-your-handwriting-say-about-your-personality
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm Ashley Hamer, and I'm curious, what does your handwriting say about your personality?
CODY GOUGH: I'm Cody Gough, and my handwriting says so many wonderful things about my personality, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: Are you sure about that?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CODY GOUGH: So this week we're doing something a little bit different. Our guest today is Dale Roberts. He is a sought-after graphologist, or a handwriting analyst, and co-author of the book, Handwriting Analysis 101. He has more than 30 years of experience in the practice working at trade shows, conferences, corporate events, and private and civic functions.
And this is where the giant asterisk pops in, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: Giant asterisk. Handwriting analysis isn't technically science, at least I wouldn't say it is. I think people have heard of handwriting analysis being in courtrooms or maybe being done by doctors. And that's because there are a bunch of different ways that you can analyze handwriting.
CODY GOUGH: So he is one type of handwriting analyst. What types of handwriting analysis exist?
ASHLEY HAMER: So there's medical handwriting analysis, and you've probably heard of people with Parkinson's having tremors, where their handwriting gets all wobbly. That's actually a legitimate way to diagnose a neurological problem.
There's also forensic document analysis, which is also known as graphonomy. It's used to establish the authenticity of documents or signatures, or like to spot forgeries. And that is never used to make personality judgments. That's just black or white? Is this real or is this not real?
CODY GOUGH: And that is admissible in court, correct?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes, it is.
CODY GOUGH: There's the medical diagnosis angle, and then there is the admissible by law angle. And now, what is the third angle?
ASHLEY HAMER: The third angle is graphology. And that is the practice of using handwriting to determine personality traits, skills, or aptitudes. And that is the one that Dale Roberts uses.
CODY GOUGH: And science has not confirmed that this is a real thing, but it's popular. A lot of people have claimed to be experts in this kind of stuff.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure, and it's always fun to hear someone tell you things about your personality, right? We'll definitely get into the science later in the episode, but there's definitely a big grain of salt I think listeners should take with this.
CODY GOUGH: Now you're very skeptical. I, however, am pretty sold by some of what happened.
ASHLEY HAMER: See the problem I think I have is that it's fun to like hear about how your parents affect you, or how big of a leader you are, but some of the stuff is actually used in certain countries for getting jobs in courtrooms. It's not all the same as it is in the United States, especially in France. It's a very popular way to judge people on job applications.
And that's kind of where I think it goes wrong, personally.
CODY GOUGH: Do you think it goes too far in that regard?
ASHLEY HAMER: I do.
CODY GOUGH: And, of course, you're listening to an audio podcast right now, and handwriting is a bit of a visual thing. But you can play along at home. Before Dale arrived at the office, the Curiosity staff provided a writing sample. Everyone on our team wrote the lyrics to--
ASHLEY HAMER: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, as you do.
CODY GOUGH: This is Ashley's idea. Everybody wrote it and then submitted it to Dale. And Dale got here, and said, I can actually tell you a lot more about your personality if you write in script or in cursive. We had all just by default printed the words with handwriting.
So he asked us to write the following sentence. And if you want to write down the following sentence, you may do so as well. The sentence is, I'm truly happy to be here today at the party.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, try writing that in print and in cursive. And then you can follow along with what Dale says and analyze your handwriting for yourself.
CODY GOUGH: And then sign your name underneath that, because your signature will also come into play during this. Have your friends do it. You can analyze their handwriting. It's going to be a blast.
We'll all be in this together, and write down your results as we go along. And if you want after this episode, you can email us at podcast@curiosity.com. And we'll talk about how everybody did in a few weeks. Again, I'm truly happy to be here today at the party.
ASHLEY HAMER: Every week, we explore what we don't know, because curiosity makes you smarter.
CODY GOUGH: This is the Curiosity podcast. I'm with Dale Roberts, graphologist or a graphoanalyst of write insights. That's W-R-I-T-E insights. You've been analyzing handwriting for more than 30 years.
DALE ROBERTS: Uh-hmm.
CODY GOUGH: How do you learn this stuff?
DALE ROBERTS: I went to school for it, and there are tons of books on it. There's nothing psychic about it. I can't predict anybody's future. There's no psychic powers needed to know how to do this. It's all in books that goes back--
A lot of it has its background in Eastern Europe. But it's been pretty popular within the US for, gosh, decades. I use it in personnel selection, a lot of different functions.
CODY GOUGH: So why does this work?
DALE ROBERTS: We think that it works, because it's a reflection of the way the person thinks. I prefer to think of it sometimes as brain writing, because we use our hand to write. Because that's the part of our body that is the most able to manipulate a pen.
But if you have somebody who's a paraplegic, and they've lost the use of their hand, they may learn to write-- they're holding the writing instrument between their toes. I personally know quadriplegics, who are able to write holding the writing instrument between their teeth and manipulating it with their tongue and their lips.
I know of a woman who is able to paint incredibly well, actually uses a lot of different forms in art. And she can paint and draw things that I couldn't do with my hands on my best day. And she's using her mouth to draw. And yet what that tells us that the talent is really in the brain. It isn't in the appendage that happens to be manipulating it.
CODY GOUGH: So our handwriting is an extension of our personality. It's coming from that part of the brain, is kind of the thesis here.
DALE ROBERTS: Uh-hmm.
CODY GOUGH: Because there are people who are skeptical of handwriting analysis.
DALE ROBERTS: Absolutely.
CODY GOUGH: Why do you think that is?
DALE ROBERTS: Well, I think it's-- some people are naturally skeptical. Some people will say you have to prove to me anything that I'm going to believe. They won't take it at face value, and actually, that's something that I can usually even see in the writing if somebody is skeptical.
One of the samples here that I'm looking at, in contrast, one, for instance, yours, you show a lot of openness to questions that have a lot of possible answers or conceptual things where-- there's another sample here that I would say the person is by nature a lot more skeptical and tends to want a lot of facts and validation in order to prove things to her.
CODY GOUGH: That's really interesting. Because I think I know who you're talking about, but I kind of want to save that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Surprise, it's me. And heck, yeah, I want a lot of facts in order to prove something. Whether you do too is up to you, but I thought I'd pop in and let you know the evidence behind handwriting analysis anyway. There have been hundreds of studies into the effectiveness of graphology, but most of them were done decades ago. So take this all with a grain of salt.
The 1992 book, The Write Stuff, by Dr. Barry Beyerstein summarizes a huge meta-analysis that Australian researcher Geoffrey Dean performed examining 200 scientific studies on handwriting analysis. Almost every study published to date across the board, Dean found that, quote, "no graphologist of any stripe was able to show reliably better performance than untrained amateurs making guesses from the same materials. In the vast majority of studies, neither group exceeded chance expectancy," end quote.
CODY GOUGH: And you mentioned Eastern Europe. So people are doing it around the world. Everyone writes differently around the world. Their language is that, write right to left.
DALE ROBERTS: Correct.
CODY GOUGH: So is your training US specific?
DALE ROBERTS: It's not US specific. And people often ask if I could analyze another languages. And I can, provided that, for me, that their alphabets are similar. For instance, most of the European languages are going to be fairly similar to English.
Now if you go into things like Hebrew or Greek or Arabic or things like that, particularly some-- and Chinese, or any of the Asian languages, that would be a different story. I think you would be able to analyze in those, but you would need to have a different reference point. Because you're looking at things like spacing and size and pressure and slant and stuff that--
If I were looking at something that was in Chinese, I wouldn't necessarily be able to determine those things as easily.
CODY GOUGH: Sure. And does the writing tool matter, fountain pen, ink pen, pencil?
DALE ROBERTS: Yeah, those-- the best samples that I get are usually written with some type of a pen that's usually like a ball or a roller-ball type. Pencil is not as indicative. Fountain pen works pretty well, but for some reason, it's a little more difficult if you're using something like a flair or a felt tip. Because that doesn't show pressure as well.
CODY GOUGH: Interesting.
ASHLEY HAMER: There's no one technique that all graphologists follow. In fact, there are a lot of different schools of graphology that adhere to different philosophies. Some take a more holistic approach that interprets the overall feel of someone's writing, while others examine handwriting letter by letter. And those two schools of thought splinter into even more philosophies.
So while we'd love to give you a step-by-step approach to analyzing your own handwriting, it depends on who you talk to. Unless you want to hire your own graphologist, your best bet is to follow along with your own handwriting, as Dale analyzes ours.
CODY GOUGH: What do you see in my handwriting that gives you that impression that I'm open to different possibilities?
DALE ROBERTS: Well, the first clue here is that you have a lot of large upper loops. So when you go into your, what we would call, the upper zone where you write, say, the word happy and the word H-- or the letter H has a big upper loop. You make very large upper loops, which tells-- the upper loops or the upper level of the writing is usually what we would call the zone of the mind. And that's where things that are abstract are going to be seen.
The middle zone is where we live day to day. The lower zone is where you find instinctual things, physical activity, some of the relational types of things. So when I look at your sample and I see all these big upper loops, that tells me that Cody likes things that are conceptual and questions that can have a lot of possible answers, as compared to ones that are very cut and dried.
CODY GOUGH: So for the listeners' knowledge, we took four Curiosity colleagues, me, my co-host Ashley Hamer, Joanie who you've probably seen on Facebook Live, and our editor-in-chief Ben Bowman. So the four of us provided handwriting samples, and we all wrote the same thing. We wrote the lyrics to the theme song of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which you recognized, which was Ashley's idea.
I just said we should all write the same thing. She goes, let's go with this. All right. Why not? So yeah, I'm very curious to kind of hear what some of the analysis was from our colleagues. So--
DALE ROBERTS: Well, I would also note, too, that most of you printed. And I also asked you to write an extra line in script. Because there are things that are revealed through script that you will not see as readily in printing. And this is significant, because more and more people these days, print rather than write in script.
And it's interesting, too, that in an era where everything is now emailed and social media, we were thinking that handwriting would become a lost art. And yet in the business community, the new gold standard for communication is becoming the handwritten note. When was the last time you received a letter from somebody?
CODY GOUGH: Ooh.
DALE ROBERTS: Most people haven't received a handwritten letter from anybody in years, if ever. And when you get something in the mail that is obviously handwritten and addressed to you, that's the first thing you're going to read.
CODY GOUGH: That's true. Ashley, you're hanging out on the other side of the curtain?
ASHLEY HAMER: Uh-hmm.
CODY GOUGH: All right. It's so funny because-- he was just saying-- he said that based on my handwriting, it looked like I was open to more kind of open answers to questions and more possibilities and things like that. And he said, and another handwriting sample here looks like somebody really likes really specific-- or did you say specific answers, or--
DALE ROBERTS: Well, she prefers questions with specific answers and jobs with very well defined tasks. And you tend to be very skeptical, in general, and are not satisfied with superficial answers.
CODY GOUGH: And I immediately said, I was like, is that Ashley? He's like, yep.
DALE ROBERTS: Well-- and it's really very easy to see, and the reason here is that when you look at Cody's samples, you notice how he has all these big upper loops that are open. Well, this tells me that his mind is very open to conceptual or abstract thinking.
Whereas most of your loops were-- where you would have loops, they're retraced. And when they're retraced like that, that tells me that you're very cautious about what you let into your mind. They come up to very sharp points, which tells me that you're kind of reaching for those answers. And you want them to be very specific and very accurate, but it takes a lot to convince you.
CODY GOUGH: Ashley's just thinking, the Barnum effect is happening right now. That's what I want to hear. But I mean, that is pretty spot on, which is crazy.
ASHLEY HAMER: So we've talked about the Barnum effect on this podcast before, and I'd say it definitely fits in here. It refers to the way you're willing to believe that an overly broad personality description is meant just for you. You're most likely to believe descriptions that are favorable, like that you're open to conceptual thinking or that you want answers that are accurate.
Let's be honest. Doesn't everyone want answers that are accurate? But this brings me to another technique that I suspect plays a big role in handwriting analysis. That is called cold reading.
Cold reading is a technique most commonly associated with psychics, but it can be used in any situation where a person is trying to pretend they have information that they couldn't ordinarily know. Cold readers use the Barnum effect to their advantage by tossing out general positive statements that could apply to anyone and gauging your reaction to guide their next statement. They might reuse information they already confirmed with you earlier, but which you might have forgotten or make win-win statements that are hard to refute. Like your extroverted at parties, but more of an introvert when you're home alone.
And when a cold reader is wrong, they can always blame the system. This is what the spirit, slash stars, slash tea leaves are telling me. But hey, they're not always 100% accurate. That's why the scientific method is so important for areas like this. Cold reading requires looking someone in the face and seeing how they react. So it doesn't hold up to a double-blind scientific study.
CODY GOUGH: Talk me through a couple of the differences between my handwriting and Ashley's handwriting, which, I'm sure, is much better than mine.
DALE ROBERTS: Well, not-- I never look at handwriting as being good or bad. It is what it is, because we are who we are. The similarities that you both have when you write in printing this-- and you also have similarities in your script.
You both have a fairly strong right slant, which is that tells me that you're both emotionally very responsive to things. You are both self-starters. You both don't need somebody else to push you a lot to get you going.
CODY GOUGH: He's just buttering us up now.
DALE ROBERTS: Well, you both have. Your goals are very practical. You both show very strong willpower and goals that are higher than average.
CODY GOUGH: What do you see that-- like what kind of a-- how does that convey?
DALE ROBERTS: One of the things that conveys that are your T crossings. There are about 43 ways that you can cross the T in the English language. And each one of them means something, but the length and the strength of that T bar and where you place it on the stem tells me a lot about how high you set your goals and how doggedly you pursue them and how strong your willpower is.
CODY GOUGH: What's the worst way to cross a T? What tells you this person's a psychopath?
DALE ROBERTS: Well, the worst way to cross a T-- it wouldn't be-- you wouldn't see psychopath in the T crossing. That would be somewhere else. But what I would say, the worst way to cross the T is probably non-existent. Meaning, if it is just very short and weak and doesn't exist, which tells me that your willpower is not very strong, and you don't have much ability to make yourself do difficult things, that you just kind of go with the wind and whatever somebody else wants you to do.
It's a much more passive response. What you have in common in yours is, again, they're high. They go up. They go up to the right and being that you're both right handed, and both of these, I would see a fair amount of ambition, leaning towards idealism.
When it's over the top of the stem, that's somebody whose goals can be almost impractical to where it's kind of a pie in the sky kind of a thing. Neither one of you-- well, this is on the positive side too.
When somebody sets their T crossing very low in the stem, it usually tells me they set their goals way lower than they're capable of. And that would not be true of either one of you. Another thing that the two of you have in common, both of you have Rs, which are the traditional-- with a kind of a flat top.
But those are signs that people who are analytical, and they usually have a lot of respect for systems and procedures and things being done in a certain way. And yet of the two, Ashley's would be much more methodical. Whereas you kind of grab a lot of things, and it's a cliche, but you kind of fly by the seat of your pants.
CODY GOUGH: He's totally right.
DALE ROBERTS: When you have these very sharp points and the R is just a-- one single point up, it's like you very quickly get to a point where, OK, that's all I need to know. Let's move on.
CODY GOUGH: This is not the Barnum effect. That is 100% true.
DALE ROBERTS: Now on the other hand, and Ashley feel free to disagree with me, because I always tell people, there's-- this stuff is going to be accurate. If I'm accurate 85% to 90% of the time, I'm very happy. There's always going to be something that I'm going to miss.
So if I'm wrong, don't hesitate to tell me I'm wrong. But my first guess of the two of you is that, Cody, you're actually the better listener of the two.
CODY GOUGH: I don't know about that. You think so?
DALE ROBERTS: Well-- and the reason I say that is because the E represents the ear, and your Es all have the openness that tells me that you're paying attention to something, where, Ashley, you tend to retrace yours. And that tells me that you tend to tune out more quickly what things that you don't want to hear. Or it requires more effort from you to pay attention to something.
CODY GOUGH: I don't know, are you just biting your lip on that one?
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, that's something that other people can tell you, but you can't tell other people. Everyone thinks that they're--
CODY GOUGH: Sure.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's hard to hear, because I wasn't at the microphone. But what I said was that's something that other people can tell you, but you can't tell yourself. Everyone thinks they're a good listener.
CODY GOUGH: Speaking of hearing things--
ASHLEY HAMER: Nice transition, Cody.
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DALE ROBERTS: Well, you're both very thorough about finishing things. You're both self-starters. Cody is a little bit, I would say a little bit more aggressive in that regard, where Ashley, I think you like things a little bit more planned and a little bit more predictable.
I'm guessing that of the two of you, Ashley, you're more of the rule follower, where Cody would be less of a rule follower. And I'm not saying that you routinely break them, but she follows the rules very routinely.
CODY GOUGH: That one, I'm 50/50.
DALE ROBERTS: OK.
CODY GOUGH: I don't know that I'm much of a rule breaker. I don't see myself as a rebel, but--
DALE ROBERTS: No, I would not call you a rebel. No, no, but I'm saying in terms of degree--
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Now who would you call a rebel? What kind of-- what in handwriting would show you, wow, somebody is really--
DALE ROBERTS: Well, probably the most obvious indicator of a rebel to me is when they do something that we call a high buckle K. And a high buckle K is a K that is capitalized and looks very large in a context where it doesn't belong.
So like if you have a capitalized K right in the middle of a word, like liked, where there's a big capital K in there, the high buckle K is a sign of somebody who routinely rejects authority and just has a real issue with them, just because they're a person of authority. So they're going to fight back. Another thing about the two of yours that I find interesting is that you make your personal pronoun Is very differently even in the printed versions.
Cody, you have a stroke down but with a top and a bottom. And Ashley, you have this simplified-- simple single stroke with no top or bottom. And people that do that usually have-- are very independent thinkers, who don't look to anybody else, like their parents for-- you don't need a lot of other opinions to make up your mind.
The other thing that also tells me if people that do that usually have a great dislike of clutter. And I'm not saying your house is always spotless. But given a choice-- or your work environment or anything else, you would prefer more clutter-free environment.
When I look at yours, Cody, and this is going to reveal whether I'm correct or not, usually the top line of an I represents the mother's influence. The bottom line represents the father's. Whichever is the longer usually represents the dominant parent. But when I look through this entire sample of yours, more often the top line is the longer of the two.
And so if you were to ask me, well, which parent is more dominant, just in terms of influence, it's not saying which ones you're closer to or if that one's good and one's bad. But I would say that I thought your mother would have been the more dominant influence in shaping who you are.
CODY GOUGH: But that's pretty Freudian right there.
DALE ROBERTS: Well, if you asked me, and I don't know you at all, other than this context here. So again, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But in looking at this, I would think that you probably grew up with-- at a two-parent household, where they were both around.
CODY GOUGH: Uh-hmm, yeah.
DALE ROBERTS: Because they're both very much in evidence here. And yet I think that she was a little bit more dominant. When I look at your script Is, the part that goes up like this, that upper balloon is the mom and the part that goes back to the left is the dad. And in yours here, again, they're pretty equal. There isn't one that's just off the charts dominant.
I also look at the signature. And the signature, the first side of the first name is typically the mother. The first side of the last name is typically the father. So your G is quite large, and that would tell me that you're pretty proud of being a Gough. Family heritage is important to you.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: I don't know if you guys already asked this, but Cody brought them back out to ask our gender, our age, and one-- oh, and whether we were right or left handed. And it seems to me that those are the things that I would be able to tell by looking at-- like those are the easy ones to me. Like to be able to look at someone's writing and know whether about how old they are, about what their gender is, and whether they're right or left handed with that slant, right?
DALE ROBERTS: No.
ASHLEY HAMER: OK.
DALE ROBERTS: No, those are things of-- that you do need to know. Because if a sample is given to me and it looks like the writing of, say, an adolescent girl, but it's actually the writing of a 40-year-old man, that tells you a lot about them and vice versa. So that's why in order to get the fairest representation, it helps to know those things first.
Now I can look at a sample and say, well, this sample looks very feminine.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, most people at first glance, I think can look at handwriting. And a female and male will have very different--
DALE ROBERTS: Yes. And to your point, if I receive a sample, say, for personnel selection, I'm going to probably have a pretty strong idea that whether it is a male or a female just from looking at it, whether they tell me that or not.
But you do need to know that in order to get your most accurate.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wait. But why is it that men and women tend to have such different handwriting? First of all, is it even true? According to a 2005 study from the University of Leicester, yes. The people in that study could correctly identify the biological sex of the author in 2/3 of handwriting samples.
That study suggested that exposure to estrogen in the womb might cause this, since that can give women a bigger difference between the length of their index and ring fingers. And women who showed that trait the most were judged to have the most feminine writing. Others suggest it could be due to the way children's brains develop. Girls are generally at a later stage of development than boys when they learn to write, so they might be better equipped to grasp good penmanship and keep those skills for life.
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So you could look at a sample, and you could assume it's a 17-year-old girl and get one set of conclusions from that. But then someone says, oh that's actually a 75-year-old male. And then suddenly you say, whoa hold on. The context is way different. Let's reanalyze this.
DALE ROBERTS: Yes, and age goes to-- let's say that the-- I'm looking at a sample of somebody who's 75 years old. Well, it's not unusual as somebody ages to begin-- as they start to have health issues to start to see a tremor in the writing or a loss of energy. You can't do at 80 what you did at 40.
And when writing starts to get weaker and maybe has a tremor in it, well, again, that's pretty normal for a 75- or 80-year-old. But if I saw that in a 25-year-old's writing, I'm going to start to wonder, is there a health issue going on?
And while I'm certainly not a doctor, and I don't go around diagnosing anything. But just a quick story. I used to have a client that would often send me samples of CEOs of companies that he worked with. He was in investment banking.
And he sent me a sample of one gentleman. And I said, you know, I don't know exactly what it is. But I said, I think that this man has a serious medical problem that is going to impact what he does here in the future pretty dramatically. And there were several indicators of that. And about two weeks after that, it was announced that he had terminal cancer and was going to be stepping down from his role as this-- which wasn't something that they knew.
CODY GOUGH: Got it.
DALE ROBERTS: Now could I have diagnosed it that specifically? Of course not. But when I can see dramatic changes in the pressure patterns in the writing, things that would indicate there's a real loss of energy, evidence of pain, that's kind of a-- a marker of pain is a loss of energy that will usually show up.
ASHLEY HAMER: Dale also analyzed the handwriting of two other people in the Curiosity office. For Ben Bowman, our managing editor, Dale said his slant and the way his Ys pull off to the left mean he's always in a hurry and gets bored easily. The first letter of Ben's words are usually the largest, which means that he's quick to speak up. I think most people in the office would agree with that.
Dale said if the largest letters were at the end, that would mean he always has to have the last word. Dale also said Ben might be stubborn, because his brace strokes, like the strokes of his cursive T, are very strong. They almost look like a tent, like he's planting his feet, Dale said.
Ben also had interesting personal pronoun Is. His cursive I had a very large left hook, and his printed I had a large bottom bar. Those both mean that he had a very strong father figure.
When I asked Ben about it, he wasn't sure. He thought both his mother and his father impacted him in different ways. He said it depends on what you mean by strong.
For Joanie Faletto, our social media manager and an editor, Dale said her small writing meant she was modest and an introvert, who is more comfortable working behind the scenes than on stage. She told me she mostly thinks of herself as an introvert. But when I asked her whether she preferred being on stage or behind the scenes, she immediately said, on stage.
He said the bars she drew on her Ts had a dish or U shape, which means she was animated and bubbly in conversation. That is definitely true. Because the final hump of her Ms goes up, Dale said she was uncomfortable in crowds.
And because her Fs look like a shepherd's staff with a large curve at the top, she's probably a caregiver. Finally, he said she wasn't afraid to take risks. That's because she leaves big wide margins. Smaller margins, the kind Cody had, might mean that you're pretty frugal.
DALE ROBERTS: For instance, in yours, Cody, you started right at the top of the page. Nobody else did.
CODY GOUGH: So what does that mean?
DALE ROBERTS: Well, it means you get right into it. But you also like things planned and that you think, well, I may need this space for later.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, you mean the space at the bottom of the page, I might need for later.
DALE ROBERTS: Right.
CODY GOUGH: Got it.
DALE ROBERTS: So you use the available space, whereas the others started further down the page. When you look at the size of the left margin, Ben probably has the largest left margin of the four of you. The left side of the page is usually past. The right side of the page is future. And when you see wider left margin, it's usually not a lot of concern about what's back there--
CODY GOUGH: Got it.
DALE ROBERTS: About the past. They're more about what's coming ahead. The more it fills the page also, it's sometimes a sign of frugality.
CODY GOUGH: I've been told that I'm quite frugal, and-- my page was folded in half and filled out completely. So I'm very cheap. So basically, everything from the length and shape of letters, to the way you cross a T, to the way you dot an I mean-- how many? You said there are 43 different ways to cross a T. How many ways are there to dot an I?
DALE ROBERTS: I haven't counted. Them there are not nearly as many. But I would say probably about half that. Just if I were guessing, I would say somewhere in the 20 range.
And some people would say, well, what do you mean about different ways? It would be in how close is it to the stem. Is that far above it? Is it to the left of it, to the right of it? If it's routinely to the right, it usually indicates a list maker, somebody who keeps lists of things to do.
And I've asked this hundreds of times, when I see those I dots off to the right. I'll say, you're a list maker, aren't you? In this-- yes, I am. Why? That's hard to say. When it's close in, these are people that usually are very intent on details.
When the eye dot is missing altogether, that tells us something. People that don't dot the Is usually aren't overly concerned with details. They consider unimportant.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, probably not very overly detail oriented, I would imagine. Now you did a blind test, and we will link to this in the show notes. But we sent you a handwriting analysis for Albert Einstein. And he's an extraordinary human being.
Was there anything extremely different about his handwriting? Or are the traits you were able to pick out, traits that you can kind of pick out everywhere?
DALE ROBERTS: Well, there were some interesting things about it. And for your listeners' benefit, I would say it was really a page of his doodling. It wasn't a note that he had written to somebody. It was doodles that included a picture of his-- a lady friend of his and included a self-drawing of him.
There were also some pretty intense mathematical formulas written on it. Now, and I didn't know who it was before I received the sample. But my guess, as I was looking at it, I wondered if it might be him. And the reason I say that is, first of all, the mathematical formulas were obviously just off the chart. Highly intelligent.
I mean, it wasn't something that your first-year algebra student is going to figure out, and I barely passed that. So I knew it was way beyond me. But he had some very interesting things in what he-- what we were able to look at the drawings that he made.
And the way that he positioned the people in the drawings, I found him pretty fascinating character. And the way that he felt about his lady friend, I thought, were strongly indicated in the way that he drew her picture.
CODY GOUGH: You also have participated in forensic document examination. So this is a scientific determination of the authenticity of a sample of writing.
DALE ROBERTS: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: How do you do that?
DALE ROBERTS: Well, the most important thing is you have to have good, what we call, exemplars, which would be your known samples have to be known to be accurate. Sometimes somebody will send me two samples and say, are these alike? Or were these written by the same person? We have to know which one is the one that you're comparing to.
Most people are not professional forgers. The skill in forging lies in the ability to replicate the individual's traits. Because let's face it, with a copy machine these days, anybody can make a copy of a signature or something else and make it look exactly the same.
So where I can spot the differences are usually going to be in areas. That's why you really need originals to compare. But we look at things like the differences in the pressure, the spacing, and the size. And a lot of times, the people that forge make stupid mistakes without really even thinking, and I'll give you a good example of that.
I was called in on a security case once, and somebody was forging requisitions in a particular department and stealing. They knew that it was one of four people in the department, and they gave me samples of those four people, the signatures. And we had the one, the authentic signature, and it actually took me about 3 seconds to figure out which one it was. I looked at it, said, well, it's her.
They said, well, now how do you that? We have no idea how you know that. And she had done a very good job of mastering the signature. But underneath the signature, she also had to write the phone number. And she never bothered to alter the way that she made numbers.
CODY GOUGH: Aaah.
DALE ROBERTS: And her numbers were a spot-on match where that was the one thing that was different from the person she was trying to copy.
CODY GOUGH: That's some detail-oriented stuff. I bet you dot all your Is.
DALE ROBERTS: Most of the time, yes. But not always.
CODY GOUGH: Unless you're in a big hurry or something?
DALE ROBERTS: Unless I'm in a big hurry.
CODY GOUGH: So you're not usually in the actual courtroom. There has to be a specific certification.
DALE ROBERTS: Yes. I don't go to court. There are certified forensic document examiners. I can usually give somebody a pretty good opinion of whether I think something is a forgery or not. And I can back it up. I've been doing this for 35 years. But to go into court usually requires some certification.
ASHLEY HAMER: There's actually no federal licensing for forensic document examiners in North America, but there are multiple accredited third-party organizations that can certify you. To become a certified forensic document examiner, you need a bachelor's degree and several years of training. Then you have to pass a comprehensive written and hands-on exam, where you explain how you reached your conclusions about a wide variety of documents.
You can technically testify as an expert witness without a certification, but there's no guarantee the court will trust your judgment.
CODY GOUGH: And you're, I think, quite accurate with a lot of the analysis that we talked through. And again, like you said, I mean nothing can be probably 100%. But I mean, I think all of the nice things that you said about me are true, of course.
DALE ROBERTS: Well, and some things, of course, that I did not see here, people can use this themselves in a lot of different ways. There are some very strong indicators of something like a criminal mind. I've seen samples come out of the prison, where it's very obvious. And one of them is, if you see Os or As that are broken on the bottom.
Now that's hard to describe, but if you see it, you recognize it instantly. And people that do that really have very little moral compass. They can't tell the difference between right and wrong.
CODY GOUGH: Interesting.
DALE ROBERTS: And I've seen that on occasion, in some pretty dramatic settings.
CODY GOUGH: Now, in addition to the law enforcement applications, is this the kind of thing that you would recommend doing with people that you're dating or people your friends are dating? And have you ever done anything like that?
DALE ROBERTS: Yeah, my wife used to complain that she didn't even like to give me a grocery list, because I could tell if she was mad at me. The funny thing about it is that, yeah, you will see in writing-- the most common thing is it can be very easy to look at a sample and know how a man views women. It can also be easy to see how the women view men. And if a woman has difficulty trusting men, that will be pretty obvious within the sample.
CODY GOUGH: What gives that away?
DALE ROBERTS: The most common one is the way that they make the lower loop on letters like a Y or a G. And when the Y or the G in a woman's writing is triangular shaped, my routine question is, I'll usually say, your trust is something men need to earn. And the answer is, that's correct, about 98% of the time.
CODY GOUGH: Now if people want a 101 on handwriting analysis, they want to do it themselves, we've gotten into lots of little details here and there. I'm sure that a lot of our listeners are writing things down and looking at their handwriting and comparing their notes right now. But you have published a book, Handwriting Analysis 101, which we'll have a link to in the show notes. And it's a comprehensive but concise little guide, isn't it?
DALE ROBERTS: It's, as I would call it, a very basic book, but it's very visual and gives you lots of examples of what different things mean and things that you can look up for yourself. It doesn't go deeply into the history or the science of it. It's just this means this, this means this, this means this. But it's something that somebody of almost any age could look at and use if they're trying to understand themselves better or trying to understand somebody else.
CODY GOUGH: Fantastic. And they can find a link to that in the show notes or at writeinsights.com. It's W-R-I-T-E insights.com, of course.
DALE ROBERTS: That's it.
CODY GOUGH: You mentioned, too, the printed writing is a little not harder to analyze. But it doesn't tell you quite as much as the script or cursive handwriting. And I know that some schools have stopped teaching cursive or script entirely. But you mentioned that some schools are taking it even a step further?
DALE ROBERTS: There are a few, and I'm not saying this is a common trend yet. What has become very common is that far more people now print than write. And with each generation, it becomes even more so. The days when we were graded on our penmanship are kind of gone.
And routinely, when I work at a party where there are a lot of kids and everybody prints, and I'll say, don't you guys write in script? Oh no, we learned that in the second grade, but nobody does it anymore. And they've moved away from that and back to the printing. People think that printing is faster, but it really isn't if they're doing it properly.
CODY GOUGH: Well, at least, I'd wrap up our podcast with something we do every episode called the Curiosity Challenge. And hopefully, I can teach you something. I'm not sure if you know this, but a study showed that students do worse on essay questions if they do this one common thing during class. What is it?
DALE ROBERTS: They do worse on essay questions if they do the one common thing in class. Well, this is totally a guess on my part, but I'm wondering if taking notes on a computer is different from handwriting their notes.
CODY GOUGH: You are 100% correct. It is typing notes. A 2014 study showed that students who take notes on laptops do worse on conceptual exam questions, ones that require a deep knowledge on the subject, than those who take notes longhand.
And we wrote about that on Curiosity.com. We'll have a link in the show notes for that as well. So maybe you could use that to support any arguments if you're being told that maybe we don't need to teach cursive or teach writing. Because it is-- it's much faster to write in cursive. I think, isn't it? I mean, seems obvious.
DALE ROBERTS: Well, there's a flow, because there's a connectedness--
CODY GOUGH: Right.
DALE ROBERTS: --to the letters. And when you have to lift your pen and start the next letter every time, it takes longer.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, unbelievable. I guess it's your turn.
DALE ROBERTS: Well, I'm always interested in things that have to do with handwriting, but I was curious if you have any idea-- you know what percentage of our presidents have been left handed versus right handed?
CODY GOUGH: Ooh, this is an excellent trivia question. So we've had 45 presidents. I know that. That's a good start.
DALE ROBERTS: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Let's say, I don't know, maybe statistically, if maybe like eight or so. Actually, maybe a little bit more, maybe like 10 or so. Let's say 18%.
DALE ROBERTS: OK. Well, it's interesting because across the population, only about 10% of the population is left handed. 9 out of 10 are right handed. But of our presidents, the ones that have been left handed have been Garfield, Hoover, Truman, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.
What I find most interesting about that is even though 10% of the population is left handed, 50% of the last 12 presidents have been left handed.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Overall, 18% of the US presidents have been lefties. Exactly what Cody said, pretty impressive.
DALE ROBERTS: Another thing that's kind of interesting too, Garfield was ambidextrous.
CODY GOUGH: I did know that we had one ambidextrous.
DALE ROBERTS: And well, Reagan was also ambidextrous, but Garfield was extremely ambidextrous. And according to legend, they said he could write with both hands simultaneously. Now there's some dispute about that, in proving it. But the vast majority of our presidents have been right handed, up until about the last 50 years.
CODY GOUGH: I've heard the Garfield legend. And couldn't he supposedly write in English in one hand and Latin in the other?
DALE ROBERTS: That's what they used to say, that it could be-- he could write in Greek with one hand and Latin with the other. But I've also read some things that have said that that's a bit-- might be a bit of an urban myth or urban legend. But he was ambidextrous.
CODY GOUGH: Very interesting. I didn't realize it was Garfield. I thought it was one of the Roosevelts actually. But yeah, wow, really good trivia. Again, people can go to writeinsights.com, W-R-I-T-E. Thanks, again, for joining me on the Curiosity podcast.
DALE ROBERTS: You're welcome. It's great to be here.
ASHLEY HAMER: You learn something new every day on Curiosity.com, like the answer to this extra credit question. The iconic Pacific Crest Trail that runs across the West Coast of the US is a hiker's dream, but it's not the longest system of recreational paths in the world. There's a route called the Great Trail, and it puts the Pacific Crest Trail to shame.
Here's your extra credit question. In what country is The Great Trail located? The answer, after this.
CODY GOUGH: Have you ever been listening to the Curiosity podcast and wanted to share a clip on Facebook or Twitter? Well, here's some super exciting news. Now you can, thanks to Gretta.com. That's G-R-E-T-T-A.
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ASHLEY HAMER: Explore history's surprising connections with a new podcast, The Thread with OZY. It's like a cross between revisionist history and 6 degrees of separation. You'll discover how various historical strands are woven together to create a historic figure, a big idea, or an unthinkable tragedy. Like how John Lennon's murder was actually 63 years in the making.
Witness how their stories hinge on the past and influence the future. The show is already a chart topper. Get The Thread with OZY. That's O-Z-Y on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
Here's your extra credit answer. The Great Trail is so long its length is the equivalent of walking from Chicago to Mount Everest and back. So where is it located? Canada, formerly known as the Trans Canada Trail. The Great Trail stretches nearly 15,000 miles from ocean to ocean. The trail touches the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and it's more than six times longer than the Appalachian Trail. Check the show notes to learn more and visit Curiosity.com to learn something new every day.
CODY GOUGH: So how did your personal handwriting analysis go? Was Dale right? Or are you still skeptical?
ASHLEY HAMER: Email us at podcast@curiosity.com to tell us how it went, and we'll follow up in a few weeks.
CODY GOUGH: You can even hand-write an email, scan it, and send it to us. Show technology who's boss.
ASHLEY HAMER: And the don't forget to tell your friends about this episode, so they can test their own handwriting. For the Curiosity podcast, I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
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