For many of us, e-mail has taken the place of writing letters the
old-fashioned way.  Laptops and electronic notebooks have spared us
the necessity of taking notes by hand at meetings or in class,
drafting our papers and reports longhand, or even scribing our own
literary manuscripts in a form that can be displayed in a case in the
British museum to strike our future fans with awe.  We can send
Christmas cards to all our friends and relations without laying a
finger on them, not even to affix a self-adhesive label to a greeting
with our name conveniently printed inside.  We don?t even have to
write our own grocery lists by hand.

There must necessarily be a cumulative effect on our handwriting, an
effect that deepens over time.  Those fine-motor muscles atrophy from
lack of use. Our level of comfort in holding a pen or pencil
diminishes.  Our smooth, even, well-formed script grows ragged and
rough without regular practice.

And I wonder if kids whose teachers expect papers to be not only
typewritten but word-processed are gaining any mastery of cursive
writing at all.

With these thoughts in mind, my questions concern handwriting analysis:

1.  Are the revealing characteristics of handwriting affected by or
independent of such factors as degree of actual achieved and
maintained manual dexterity?  (Other comparable factors might be the
impairments of disability, age, illness, and loss of vision.  The
focus of my question concerns the effects of disuse?-actual loss of
previously attained skill through lack of practice.)

2.  Have graphologists taken these changes of handwriting use into
account in their study of handwriting analysis, and if so, how?

Thank you,
Archae0pteryx

Interesting thought.

The graphologist question doesn?t really arise because the aspects of
hand writing which concern graphologist do not in the main depend upon
the quality or expertise of the writer. Illustrating, many people
change hand due to injury and the writing is in essential essence
still the same, regardless of different slope or even a tendency to
mirror write. Furthermore, transferring writing to a foot, mouth or
shoulder still retains the essence. It?s much the same as an artist
strokes, something innate, not taught. Some people can of course
perform excellent imitations of other writing but clues tend to
remain.

Is it such a dreadful thing losing the ability to hand-write though?
Redundant skills are lost to the majority when replaced by new ones.
Previous generations used to write beautiful ?copper plate? so should
one bemoan this loss? Engineers (as myself) although extremely
dextrous, tend to be word-blind and simply never could write properly,
though I deplore the abuse of language and spelling which makes some
Google questions indecipherable. One can possibly glean far more than
graphologists about the character of the writer, based upon factors of
composition and attention to detail.

Best

Hey archae0pteryx!

What an awesome question!  My husband, brother in-law and I were just
discussing this very topic at dinner last night, brought on by my
difficulties signing my name to my credit card slip.

I had to stop and think how to form the letters.  This has been a
problem for a long time, as I type anywhere from 5 - 12 hours a day,
and only rarely pick up a pen.  I don't even write checks anymore, I
pay all my bills online!

We surmised that graphology would be rendered useless by this
(increasingly common) phenomenon, but it turns out that we were wrong.

When asked if the near absence of conventional writing had any effect
on graphological analyses, graphologist Keith Rosario said no:

"I have analysed handwritings of software engineers - people who write
the least - but from the feedback I got, my analyses was pretty
accurate." He, however, warns that the analyst should have prior
knowledge of the age, sex, and handedness of the writer to avoid
misanalysis."

It's all in your hand - The Hindu - October 21, 2002
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mp/2002/10/21/stories/2002102101290300.htm

Of course, I've not been able to find anything else discussing
graphology in the computer age, so I'm posting this as a comment
instead of an answer.

--Missy

Thanks, Missy.  I am starting to wonder why my juicier questions go
unanswered more often than not these days.  A couple of years ago,
that was not the case.  Have I lost my ability to word a question
well, or are the going rates inflated beyond the reach of my
entertainment budget now, or are researchers going for the quick-win
answers and not the ones that take more digging?  I don't see
researchers generally shying away from the tough ones or exhibiting
symptoms of ADD, but I am starting to wonder what's changed.

Another change that's been bothering me a bit is an apparent trend
among commenters.  Or maybe it's not so much a change in the behavior
of commenters as an influx of new commenters with a different ethic. 
Instead of just offering helpful additions, opinions, or pointers in
their comments, lately it's as if some of them were actually competing
with researchers to deliver an answer, thus preventing a researcher
from earning a fee.  I've had the distinct sense that some were
pouncing on questions as fast as they could, as if trying to beat
researchers to the punch, speaking in an authoritative-sounding voice
and offering responses that are often pock-marked with misspellings,
malapropisms,  and grammatical abuses and promoting some particular
point of view, especially religious or political.  Both the
free-wheeling style and the credibility of GA are, in my estimation,
being damaged by this new pattern.  I cringe when I see certain names
among the comments because I know their remarks are going to hammer on
religious views that may be not only of no interest but actually
irrelevant to the subject of a given question.  And I also feel uneasy
when I see that some questioners are treating these comments as if
they came from certified researchers when in fact they might just be
rants of Johnny One-Notes with no taint of objectivity about them,
never mind the credentials and track records that we come here for.

Archae0pteryx