It rarely happens anymore, but when it does, I freeze. Someone asks me to complete a form, sign a birthday card, or jot a note. Heaven forbid when a document requires my actual signature. My longhand is pretty much illegible to anyone but me. In school, my classmates never asked to borrow my notes more than once. It made sense to me, but when I looked at their elegant script, I hid my paper. I grew tired of losing exam points and experiencing the walk of shame to the teacher’s desk to explain that I had the correct answer.

I rejoiced when teachers required typed submissions since the font removed judgment and censor. Times New Roman masked my personality, and the personal secrets revealed in my script. My words stood on their merit, untainted by the reader’s assumptions and their inability to decipher my scrawl. The ink color, the angle of my slant, the size of my loops, or my sentences rising as they cross the page no longer came into question.

My handwriting always draws comments, so I print in self-defense. Each word is composed of all capitals. I distinguish my capitalized letters by making them taller. I am proficient and print faster than most people write. My hand screams with annoyance, and it conveys my distaste of writing with a pen for others to analyze. Then the questions begin. Are you an architect? An engineer? A scientist? When they look at my John Hancock, they ask if I am a doctor.

What does your handwriting reveal about you?

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Keep on writing.

Jo Hawk The Writer