Handwriting: Regular or Inconsistent?

I’ve found that one of the most frequent characteristics an employer seeks of their candidates is consistency in work style and work production.

Some of the areas in handwriting where this is evident is in the consistent size of letters, the consistency of slant, consistent pressure and the ‘cadence’ or strokes that return to the baseline of the writing on a regular basis. The presence of this constellation of trait strokes indicates the level of stability, maturity and self-discipline of the candidate. This is the type of person who will have the staying power and reliability that most employers value so highly.

All too often a writing is seen where the size of letters fluctuate in size within a word or the slant will vary greatly from word to word or line to line. A candidate whose cursive or printed script has these characteristics is someone whose maturity has yet to be developed, someone who is less than disciplined and someone who might be careless in their work.

All too often I have seen candidates’ writing where there is frequent patching of letters, frequent flooding of ink within words and cross-outs of letters or words that seem almost angry. I have seen instances where candidates have this crossing-out of letters within their own name or the date. Such a writing is far from what could be termed ‘regular’.

Most people would agree that capitalizing the name of the company you are applying to would be usual, if not an understood or unconscious stroke of the pen. Believe it or not, I have in my possession a candidate’s writing where they on three occasions used lower case letters to write the company name. This, once again, is something I would definitely call irregular!

There are some who might immediately think: “What if the person is from another country and English is not their first language?” I have seen writings from people very new to North America that are by far more regular and consistent than people who were born and educated here.

A writing that is consistent and ‘regular’ is termed a writing with ‘good form level’. The opposite features mentioned above are red flags employers need to watch for!


Be sure to view my 5-minute “Power of the Pen” DVD on my Home Page at www.handwritinganalysistoronto.com