Handwriting Day (23/01)

Every year on January 23, the world celebrates Handwriting Day or, more elegantly, Handwriting Day, which is established to remind us all of the uniqueness of handwriting, the need to practice it, and the uniqueness of each person’s handwriting.

After all, the growing popularity of computers, emails and communication in instant messengers, sets of stickers with printed hint phrases, as well as other means of quick communication every year gradually leads a modern person away from the opportunity to express his thoughts by writing them with his own hands. Perhaps in the near future, a letter or postcard written by « by hand» will become a welcome acquisition.

The initiator of the establishment of Handwriting Day was the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA), which proclaimed January 23 as the date of the «handwritten» holiday.

On this day, one of the prominent American statesmen — John Hancock (January 23, 1737 — October 8, 1793) was born, who was the first to sign the US Declaration of Independence. Hancock's signature was large and sweeping, which added authority to its author.

Painting K.P. Stepanova «Letter» (1893, Nizhny Novgorod State Art Museum, Public Domain)

The history of the development of handwriting dates back thousands of years, and perhaps over the same time people have been trying to determine the character of a particular person by handwriting. Both Aristotle and the great Italians of the Renaissance expressed their thoughts about the connection of handwriting with the spiritual world of man.

In 1875, the French abbot Jean Hippolyte Michoner first used the term «graphology» (the other Greek γράφω — I write and λόγος — teaching), which today defines the field of knowledge about handwriting and methods of his research in connection with the mental state of personality. The German philosopher and psychologist Ludwig Klages (1872—1956) made a great contribution to the theory of graphology.

Modern scientists name seven main characteristics of handwriting from which you can create a portrait of a person, — the size of letters, their inclination and shape, the direction of handwriting, the intensity of pressure, the nature of writing words, and the overall assessment of handwriting. Graphologists believe that there must be a connection between handwriting features and character traits, because the human brain subconsciously «witches» with the hand of the writer. By the way, they also explain by the work of the brain that when a person grows up and changes his character, his handwriting also changes.

Fortunately, situations always arise in our lives when you want to write a letter with your own hand... (Photo: orion_production, licensed from depositphotos.com)

As you know, handwriting has become a very important tool for criminologists. The goal of handwriting experts — is to establish the authenticity of a particular document. Specialists in the scientific examination of a document must be fluent in a variety of writing styles. Of course, they carefully study all the characteristics of handwriting in order to accurately establish the identity of the writer.

By the way, according to doctors, the beauty of handwriting and penmanship contribute to maintaining health and prolonging life. For example, in Japan and China, where calligraphy is widely developed, it is believed that writing can be treated. At one time, the Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication conducted experiments and found that students with beautiful handwriting are generally healthier and more promising. After all, to write a text beautifully, you need smooth breathing, a stable psyche, and active brain function... It is not for nothing that great calligraphers were entirely long-livers, the works of this institute emphasized.

It can be assumed that scientific research, the subject of which is handwriting, will continue, and scientists will achieve a deeper understanding of the dependence of handwriting on a person’s character and its impact on health. It can be assumed that developers of various mobile devices and gadgets will create a tool that allows us to write emails in our own handwriting. But, fortunately, situations always arise in our lives when we want to write kind and simple words with our unique hand.



Postcard «January 23 — Handwriting and Handwriting Day» Story «Husband's Help»

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