Is handwriting analysis legit science?
Dear Cecil: What’s the Straight Dope on handwriting analysis? I know that handwriting experts’ testimony can be accepted in court, so there must be something to it. But I have a hard time believing that a smart criminal wouldn’t be able to change his writing to avoid detection. On a related issue, can an “expert” really tell something about your personality from your handwriting (e.g., that loops in your g’s and y’s indicate a high sex drive)? If that were true, it would seem that one’s handwriting would change from day to day, which it doesn’t. — Kristin in Sausalito, California At first this question might seem like a great opportunity to lay out the difference between science and pseudoscience. On the one hand we have forensic handwriting analysis, in which an expert decides whether two or more samples were written by the same person, e.g., whether a signature was forged. On the other we have graphology, in which some sage tries to divine a subject’s personality traits from his or h
