Factors affecting handwriting

1. FACTORS AFFECTING
HANDWRITING

2. • There are numerous conditions and
circumstances that contribute to the nature of
normal writing and the quality of the writing
performance.
• Some of these factors are variables that are
extrinsical and, for the most part, not within
our voluntary control.
• They belong to the nature of the writer and
include those factors that are physical in kind
while others are mental.

3. • Age and infirmity are invariable extrinsical
influences.
• Left-handedness is another frequently encountered
factor.
• Other variables are intrinsical and somewhat
circumstantial.
• They are factors over which we might exercise some
control, if we chose to do so.
• The imitation of family and other practices, or the
grasp of the writing instrument are two such factors.

4. • Included within these intrinsical factors are
that set of temporary conditions, derived from
hallucinogens, alcohol, hypnosis, stress and
fatigue, that exercise their influence upon
writing, regardless of the form it otherwise
takes.
• All are influences to which one voluntarily
submits, for other reasons.

5. EXTERNAL FACTORS – (A)WRITING
SYSTEM
• To some extent, the nature or appearance of our writing is
predetermined.
• Since it is an acquired perceptual motor skill and there is
nothing about it that is known to be instinctive or hereditary, it
is primarily environment, experience, and culture dependent.
• The writing systems we are taught, that follow patterns
popular within our country or our particular population
provide some basic characteristics of form, slant, proportions,
movement, and size.

6. • Prior to the time when the typewriter and the now
common electronic printer began to dominate, our
communication methods and records were dependent
upon calligraphy.
• Numerous occupations developed distinctive
characteristics.
• There was a small literary hand with wide word spacing,
the strong railroad style having a fixed number of words
per line, the compact writing of the bookkeeper’s hand.
There was the modified Round Hand with vertical slope,
having wide spacing between letters that was known as
the Civil Service hand, and there was also a large
awkward, angular hand that was taught in certain
exclusive schools for women.

7. • The role of penmanship in the development of the
individual has changed substantially over recent
years, as many examiners have observed, and
adherence to any writing system has not been aspired
or required.
• Because the evidence of the writing system to which
the individual was subjected in his or her formative
years is becoming that unclear, we are now compelled
to omit reference to it as a class characteristic to be
considered in the comparison of many if not most
writings.
• Its value may only lie in the study of writings of
nearly a century ago.

8. (B) PHYSIOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS
• 1) use of mouth or foot
• Those that are not familiar with actual cases of it find the
ability of people to write with a foot or the mouth almost
incredulous.

9. • The individual that writes with the foot or the mouth
does not have the facility of the hands to uncap the
pen, hold the paper, turn over the page, manipulate
an eraser, or the capacity to write on a horizontal
surface at the elevation of a bank, business, or store
counter.
• Nevertheless, persons incapacitated in this fashion
from birth are capable of developing remarkable
facility for adapting to the situation.

10. 2. USE OF ARTIFICIAL AIDS (PROSTHESES)
• Artificial aids have been developed by talented
individuals to satisfy the writing needs of particular
individuals.
• More often than not, these are cases of persons that
have lost the use of the dominant hand or arm due to
accident or injury, or the inability to grasp the writing
instrument owing to arthritis.
• These devices may be engineered to operate from the
affected member (the arm or hand), from the head, or
from a prosthesis designed to replace a lost hand or
arm.

11. • Studies have disclosed that after a period of practice with the
artificial aid the ability to write reasonably well can be
reacquired.
• A common attribute of the writing produced with artificial
aids may be observed in the lack of pen pressure that can be
applied, so much so that ball point pens exhibit poor ink
flow.
• The preference of these writers seems to be the fibre-tipped
pen.
• As in other situations in which new writing skills must be
learned, the writing tends to be larger than normal, at least
until the finer manipulations of the pen are accomplished.

12. 3. DEAFNESS AND SIGHTLESSNESS
• The writing of the deaf or hearing impaired
individual has not been the a subject of
frequent study.
• It may be that it has been presumed that one’s
inability to hear would have little or no effect
upon one’s ability to communicate by pen and
ink.

13. • The principal characteristic by which the writing of
the deaf deviates from that of the hearing-capable
individual rests in the field of linguistics.
• Some general observations regarding the writing of
the deaf include:
• 1. a greater inclination at all ages to use nouns, rather
than pronouns,
• 2. A greater inclination to omit verbs.
• 3. If articles such as “a,” “an,” and “the” are used,
they are used in greater number than the hearing
population.

14. • 4. Greater difficulty is encountered in the use of
prepositions, adverbs, adjectives, and conjunctions.
• 5. A greater inclination to write short (but more)
sentences of simple construction, employing limited
vocabulary.
• 6. A greater tendency to commit errors in verb
tenses, and lexical substitutions, e.g., family for
familiar or vice versa.

15. • The writing of the blind or visually-impaired
individual is quite a different matter.
• The characteristics it may exhibit will diverge to
some extent depending on whether the vision loss
occurred prior to the point in the individual’s
education when writing is normally taught, or after
some experience in the writing process had been
acquired.
• Then too, the written product will vary with the
degree of the vision loss.

16. • Thus, the characteristics of the extended writing of the visually
impaired or totally blind person that occur to a greater or lesser
extent according to the degree of sight loss, the writing aids
employed and the type of instruction received, if any, are likely
to include:
• 1. The misalignment of letters with respect to one another, of
words with respect to one another, and of writing with respect
to a ruled or implied baseline.
• 2. The inconsistency of spacing between letters and between
words.
• 3. The intersection of writing with other writing or printed
material.
• 4. The overlapping of letters or of words, sometimes making
reading or decipherment difficult.

17. • 5. Infrequent pen lifts in cursive writing, and
connections, frequently longer than necessary,
employed to assist in positioning the succeeding
letter.
• 6. The absence of “t” crossings in cursive writing, or
alternatively their construction as a continuous
motion of the pen.
• 7. The absence of “i” dots or “j” dots in cursive
writing, or their consistent application and location
over the stem of the letter, indicative of the
employment of some means of assistance, such as
another finger.

18. • 8. The un-repaired or un-retouched occurrences of pen failure
creating voids in ink deposits in the strokes of ballpoint pen
writing.
• 9. A lack of fluency, or the appearance of tremour in strokes,
owing to an uncertainty in the formation of letters or in the
writing process.
• 10. The infrequent introduction of hesitation marks or
scratches at the beginning of letters or commencement
strokes.
• 11. Some increase in letter sizes from that of previous
practices, if writing had been learned prior to the onset or
occurrence of the impairment.
• 12. A likely increase in vertical spacing between lines of
writing.

19. Illustration of a writer
who uses a writing aid
(a ruler) for aesthetic
reasons. She
is without visual
impairment. Even
textual material is
written the same way.
All lower loops
are added later.

20. (C)PHYSICAL FACTORS (NORMAL)
(1) MATURITY, PRACTICE, AND DEVELOPMENT
• The development and progress of one’s handwriting passes through
four stages in the course of a lifetime:
• (1) the formative stage,
• (2) the impressionable or adolescent stage,
• (3) the mature stage, and
• (4) the stage of degeneration.
• The development we are speaking of is really a matter of control.
During the first two stages, the writing act is more deliberate and
under greater voluntary control.
• During the latter two stages, the act is more involuntary and under
progressively less control.

21. • It is obvious that the changes that will occur during
the first stage will be seen in structure, fluency, and
consistency.
• It is the learning stage for all persons, when letter
designs are being developed and skills are being
mastered.
• The changes occurring in the second stage may be
quite pronounced in form or style, depending on
the source of the influence responsible for the
change.
• The desire to imitate another style may stem from
many exogenous factors, both aesthetic and
identification related.

22. • Writing of the third stage is more consistent over longer
periods of time, and likely to change only in fluency or
design; the former usually being the result of writing
frequency, and the latter usually being the product of a
particular occupation.
• The fourth stage, associated with endogenous factors, is
prompted largely by neuro-physical degeneration, the onset
and the magnitude of which varies with the individual.
• It is the stage in which line tremors become evident, shapes,
slopes, and sizes become less consistent, and quality or skill
in writing becomes progressively poorer.

23. 2. HANDEDNESS
• a. Dextrality (i.e., right-handedness).
• The best estimate that one can make is that 89
percent of the population are right-handed insofar
as handwriting is concerned.
• For many years, instruction in penmanship was
tailored to the right-handed individual.
• The grasp of the writing instrument was
prescribed and the orientation of the paper to the
writer was directed.

24. • b. Sinistrality (i.e., left-handedness).
• c.Ambidexterity. Some writers have been
observed with the ability to write reasonably well
with either hand.
• In most cases, the executions by the two hands will
be similar in many respects, but divergences
between them will be found in fluency or writing
quality.
• The reason for this is suggested to be the lack of
practice that one hand will experience owing to the
writer’s inclination to use the other hand as a matter
of personal preference.

25. (D) PHYSICAL (ABNORMAL STATE OF HEALTH) –
1. HANDWRITING AS A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL
• Some, but not many, researchers have investigated the
affect of particular illnesses upon handwriting
• Interest in this aspect of human conduct developed to
employ handwriting as a diagnostic tool.
• Few studies have proven that this is useful largely due to
the fact that the effects of illness upon handwriting have
not been found to predate the occurrence of other
symptoms of a disease that are more specific in their
diagnostic values.

26. • For the most part, the effects of an illness upon
one’s handwriting stem from and portray a loss of
control or fluency.
• The result is a more erratic execution, exhibiting
omissions, distortions (particularly in the
formation of loops and compound curves),
irregularities in the application of pressure, and
general illegibility.
• There is a loss in such consistency as the writing
previously had.

27. (2) ILLNESSES
• Dyslexia, on the other hand, is a learning
disability that becomes apparent in children
• as a difficulty in learning to read and later as a
problem with spelling.
• It is thought to be a maturational defect that
lessens as the child grows older and is capable of
improvement or correction, especially with the
proper remedial assistance.

28. • Alzheimer’s Disease is an inexorable, degenerative, neurological
disorder for which there is currently no known method of
prevention or cure.
• Between 2 to 3% of the population over the age of 60, and from 7
to 10% of those over 65 are believed to be affected by this illness.
• Alzheimer’s Disease causes the person to lose the complex
memory bank that is the human brain.
• Losing memory doesn’t simply end intellectual growth; It
reverses the learning process. When memory fails us, we revert
eventually to childhood and ultimately to infancy.

29. • As one loses memory, one’s ability to read and to write is also
diminished.
• Words are forgotten, the thread of a conversation is lost, and
there is a tendency for one to repeat him/herself endlessly.
• As the disease progresses, the individual finds it difficult to
concentrate on and finish a given task, even one as
straightforward as writing his/her own name.
• For a while, the individual may succeed if given a model to
follow, and then the process becomes too complex for him/her
to decide how to start.

30. • Arthiritis - the most common physical anomaly that
tends to accompany age is arthritis and its related
conditions
• It is a condition that will have its effects upon writing,
and one that may be encountered by the document
examiner in the study of wills, deeds, bank documents,
and perhaps in suicide notes.
• The question of import, in all cases in which alterations
to the writing act may result from medical
circumstances, is whether the effects may be
misinterpreted as indications of a spurious execution of
one kind or another.

31. • The significant changes afflicted in the writings of
arthritics are -
• line quality
• size/proportions
– size (pictorially larger)
– spacings increased (greater concentration on letter
forms rather than words, more deliberate or conscious
writing)
• retouching/patching (82 percent of samples)
• loop forms wider, squared, shorter, with broken
connections (78 percent of samples)
• terminal strokes, heavier pressure, blobbed endings (48
percent of samples)

32. • Parkinson’s disease - Parkinson’s disease (PD) is
considered to be a disease of the middle and older
ages.
• The affect of the ailment upon handwriting is
frequently profound, but equally profound is the
affect of medications upon the uncontrollable tremor
that is characteristic of the advanced stages of the
disease.
• Two other less-common conditions produce tremor,
Progressive supra-nuclear palsy and Huntington’s
disease.

33. • These, with Parkinson’s disease and Essential
tremor, are classed as extra-pyramidal disorders to
identify them with the part of the neural system
within the brain to which they are attributed.
• Progressive supra-nuclear palsy is much like akinetic
Parkinson’s disease, but has other characteristics
observed in the face and eyes including the paralysis
of eye movements.
• Huntington’s disease is hereditary and is
characterized by large jerks of the arm or hand
occurring at random

34. In this case:
A — 1984,
B — 1987,
C — 1992,
D — 1996,
E — 1997,
F — 1998.
The 1997 and 1998
writings were
made following a
change in
medications. PD was
confirmed in 1993.

35. (E) MEDICATION
• Although medications have been suggested as the cause of
changes in writing by many authors, little literature is
available that describes their effects.
• Gilmour and Bradford (1987), found that neuroleptic drug
treatments for schizophrenia did produce changes in
individual writings, but the nature and extent of these
changes were quite variable between subjects.

36. • Furthermore, the nature of the change in sofar as
line quality varied from an improvement to a
deterioration.
• “The effect of drugs (i.e., medications) on
handwriting is dependent on the type of drug
administered, the individual’s sensitivity to it, and
the points at which the handwriting is sampled
during drug treatment.”

37. (F) INFIRMITY
• 1. Time Changes or Age and Senility
• As we stated earlier handwriting progresses through four stages
in the course of a writer’s life. It begins with
• (1) the formative or learning stage, that is followed by
• (2) the impressionable or adolescent stage, sometimes called
the puberty stage.
• (3) the maturity stage that is the longest and in which the
writing is most consistent.
• (4) that of degeneration, sometimes referred to as the senility
stage, during which writing quality, pen control, and fluency
suffer progressively.

38. • Changes may occur during any of these stages
depending on circumstances, but particularly so and
understandably during the early stage when it is
developing, and the late stage when it is
deteriorating.
• There are also temporary or short term changes
occurring in handwriting resulting from illness,
disease, or injury, the effects of which diminish or
disappear completely with recovery from the
condition.

39. 2. GUIDED HANDS
• a. Deathbed Signatures.
• With the decline in writing ability, illness effects the
writing consistency.
• Because of a decline in coordination, signatures will
vary between themselves in somewhat erratic manners.
• There may be the occurrence of extraneous, false
strokes.
• As quality diminishes, letter designs, relative heights,
slant, and alignments lose their former stability.
• The product may appear deceptively false.

40. • Terminal illnesses, in their last stages of progress,
produce signatures that are often accompanied by
false starts.
• The writing is erratic and letters are poorly formed.
• Terminal strokes and final elements of these
signatures may display more fluency than any other
part as though there was some relief from a
strenuous ordeal.
• The study of these signatures for the purpose of
identifying the handwriting is made more difficult
by the lack of contemporaneous standards.

41. • b. Guided-Hand or Assisted Signatures.
• Often enough it is alleged that a second party
endeavored to assist the testator in executing a
signature by holding the hand and guiding it through
the movement.
• Some recent studies have been directed at the
corrective effects upon a subject’s handwriting
ensuing from drugs and other medications
administered to the patient.
• There are, for example, drugs that will suppress the
tremors characteristic of Parkinson’s disease for
periods of time but not permanently.

42. (G) MENTAL STATE OF THE WRITER
• 1. Emotional Stress
• The element of emotional stress is not only a
condition peculiar to the questioned writing, but can
enter into the execution of the so-called request
writings of a subject.
• Its effects can be noted in some exaggeration of the
range of natural variation that a writer may exhibit. It
has been suggested that stress in some degree has a
part in most of the cases that an examiner studies.

43. • 2. Nervousness
• Although nervousness has been suggested as
a cause of fine tremors or some lack of
fluency in writing, no particular studies have
been conducted on its effects.
• Understandably, the induction of a nervous
state in a subject in a test situation may not
be easily accomplished.

44. • 3. Instability (Mental Illness)
• In studies to test that patients’ signatures may
have a useful potential in the making of
psychiatric diagnoses, some evidence has
been found that the signature size in the
manic group and in the organic mental
disorder group of patients was significantly
larger than that of control groups

45. • Little has been reported respecting the writing of
individuals experiencing Multiple Personality
Disorders (MPD).
• This is a psychopathological and psycho-
physiological phenomenon that is offered with
increasing frequency as an explanation for certain
kinds of conduct or actions.
• It is described as a dissociative disorder in patients
that have experienced childhood abuse or neglect
and that are dissociation - prone.

46. • MPD is defined as two or more distinct
personalities that exist in one person, each of
which is dominant at a particular time.
• Switching from one personality to another occurs
when the subject has difficulty dealing with
specific conflicts, and feels threatened by a
particular situation.
• The reports are of importance to document
examiners that says that the handwriting of the
subject changes notably when the individual
switches from one personality to another.

47. • A document examiner provided examples of the
writing of four of some nine personalities of one
subject, in which there are size changes, proportion
changes, quality changes, and changes in lateral
expansion.
• Despite such changes, in the cases of which we are
aware, given adequate standards, document
examiners have been able to associate the writings of
the various personalities of a subject as the products
of one and the same physical being.

48. (H) INJURY
• The effects of injury upon one’s ability to write are
as practical as one might expect.
• Injuries that impair the movement of the writing arm
or hand will afflict the control of the writing
instrument.
• The result, usually, is erratic movements or sudden
changes in direction, or an obvious inability to
execute some finer or more complex maneuvers of
the pen or pencil.

49. • It is important to bear in mind that injuries are usually
temporary.
• Unless some permanent damage to the arm or hand has
occurred, writing ability will be regained over a period
of time, although depending on the injury recovery may
not be 100 percent.
• The dates on which the injury occurred and on which the
questioned or standard writings were executed may
become important and should be noted.
• The quality of the questioned writing must be consistent
with the ability of the writer on the particular date of its
purported execution.