The study of the characteristics of handwriting to obtain indications about a person’s psychological make-up or state of health. It is possible to detect certain signs of physical disease, such as fine nervous tremors or irregularity of the pulse.
The examination of handwriting, used to diagnose or analyze personality.
The study of handwriting, especially to assess the writer’s personality, character, and/or abilities. The first attempt to analyze handwriting formally was probably that of Camillo Baldi, an Italian scholar and physician. His book Treatise on a Method to Recognize the Nature and Quality of a Writer from His Letters was published in 1622 while Baldi was a professor at the University of Bologna. Early scholarly and professional interest in graphology was minimal simply because very few people could read and write. As education became more widespread in the 19th century, interest in handwriting analysis rapidly increased, though at first more as an art than as a science. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Edgar Allen Poe, Honore de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and other figures of this period in history dabbled in graphology.