14. Letters that are connected vs. disconnected
As children, most of us started off printing, then learned how to write in cursive in school around age 7 or 8. Once we reached a point where our penmanship was no longer graded and monitored, we were left to develop our own writing style. The handwriting of someone who continues to use connected letters demonstrates the dominance of logical thinking—”where the person works sequentially to connect related ideas,” says Poizner. It’s also an expression of conforming to social norms: “someone who is conventional, cooperative and appreciates the importance of being predictable, and therefore [does] what they are expected to do.”
According to Poizner, handwriting analysis is a bit trickier when someone writes with letters that aren’t connected, as the interpretation may vary depending on whether the person learned how to write in cursive script in school. For those who did learn penmanship in school, she says that writing with disconnected letters is an expression of independent-mindedness and, potentially, rebelliousness—given that they were taught to connect letters.
There’s also another category: something called “print script,” where the writer uses simplified strokes and a mix of connected and disconnected letters. “This is usually the handwriting of an artist or writer,” Poizner notes. “This writer is highly intuitive and thereby has an innate sense of when it’s most efficient to connect and when it’s most efficient to disconnect. It shows good common sense, ingenuity and creativity.”