Fashion changes in everything. Every generation had its own particular type of writing. Compare, for instance, any bundle of letters taken at random, out of an old desk or library. It is quite easy to sort them into bundles in sequence of dates, and also guess accurately the age and position of the writers. The flowing Italian hand, used by educated women early in the nineteenth century, has now developed into a bold, decisive, almost masculine writing.
It will be found that most professions have special characteristics in writing and these are all liable to change, according to circumstances and writing is the clearest proof of both bodily and mental condition, for in case of paralysis, or mental aberration, the doctor takes it as a certain guide.
The most noticeable movement by which cultured people recognize one another are the play of the features, the gait, talking and writing. Of these evidences the last named is the most infallible, for by a few hasty lines we may recognize again a person whom we neither see nor hear, and enjoy in addition the advantage of being able to compare quietly and at our leisure the traits of one individual thus expressed with the characteristics of another. There are not many men to be found in any walk of life who do not endeavor to conceal to some extent, however slight, their true views and emotions, when brought into close contact with their fellow-beings. But the mind photographs itself unsuspectingly in the movements of the hands, by the use of pen and ink away from all alien observation, and with the rigid unchangeable witness in our possession the character of the author of the manuscript lies open to the gaze of the intelligent reader.
In this way handwriting becomes much more individual than any other active sign of personality. It varies more, it is more free, it represents the individual less artificially than voice or gesture. There must exist between the form and arrangements of letters in words and lines, on the one hand, and certain individual peculiarities of the writer, on the other, some kind of connection. It is strange that no scientific writing has ever yet been undertaken, for it seems conclusive that handwriting is a kind of voiceless speaking, consequently a phenomenon, and therefore an operation which lies within the province of physiology.
Yet there are no books or studies on the subject of disputed handwriting up to the present time, short newspaper and magazine articles and sketches being the only contributions the public has been favored with up to the publication of this work.
There is as yet no physiology of handwriting formulated, and that the further question of the relation of handwriting to the moods of the writer has not ever been touched upon scientifically. The history of science teaches us that in case a fact, which is theoretically and practically important, has been neglected for decades and even centuries by trained scientists; but the subject will now be taken up and a place made for it among the prominent and leading studies of the day. Interest in disputed handwriting and writing of all kinds is rapidly coming to the front in the United States, and is a study and research that the business man of the future will be perfectly familiar with.
It is now no longer the rule to teach to write entirely by the aid of set copies, as was the case with our forefathers, who wrote after one approved pattern, which was copied as nearly as possible from the original set for them; therefore characteristics, peculiarities are longer in asserting themselves and what is now considered a "formal" handwriting was not developed till late in life. There were, and still are, two divisions or classes of handwriting, the professional and personal; with the first the action is mechanical and exhibits few, if any, traces of personality. Yet in the oldest manuscripts studied and consulted there are certain defined characteristics plainly shown. The handwritings of historical and celebrated personages coincide to a remarkable degree with their known virtues and vices, as criticized and detailed by their biographers.
As the art of writing became general, its form varied more, and more, becoming gradually less formal, and each person wrote as was easiest to himself.
Education, as a rule, has a far from beneficial effect upon handwriting; an active brain creates ideas too fast to give the hand time to form the letters clearly, patiently and evenly, the matter, not the material, being to the writer of primary importance.
So as study increased among all classes, writing degenerated from its originally clear, regular lettering into every style of penmanship.