I found this to be really interesting, as I recently watched Zodiac, and this was a huge piece of that case. The detectives and police focused heavily on trying to identify the killer by comparing writing samples. Samples they gave of possible suspects came back as inconclusive to the expert, but that was based on minute discrepancies in the writing samples he was given to analyze. And that is just for analysis of trying to get a match. The lecture points out how some try to use this for psychological analysis of a person, without even talking to them or understanding who they are.
One interesting think I think about this is that today, I feel like the value of penmanship is going down. Everyone can type on a screen or computer, and it will look the same. I also don’t think in the lecture it goes into cursive, which is inherently different than just print. At least from what I see as well, it may not account for mood or headspace of a writer, which I feel like could affect what is written. Another factor is setting. If I am taking notes, I know my handwriting looks different. It is way sloppier and can be tough to decipher. Versus, something like a test, where I will put in extra effort for it to look nice and legible. So basically, it is easy to see how graphologists can think they can learn a lot and say they know what they’re talking about, but this practice definitely comes off as shoddy at best.
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Penmanship is going down due to the increase of technology and lack of cursive. It becomes more difficult to examine handwritten discrepancies if society becomes a typewriter. With that said, humans tend to have patterns in their texts and sentence structure. This will help future detectives spot out the discrepancies using technology.
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