The lost art of handwriting

Studying handwriting was long thought of as a way to delve into the psyche. In fact in 1991, 91 per cent of French companies still used graphologists to screen job applicants. They scrutinised the size, shape, spacing, angles, slopes, links, pen pressure and deviation from the norm to assess personality traits. While the science on this is sketchy, we do know that messy writing may be a sign of ADD and increasingly illegible scrawl could signal cognitive decline.

Though more than the science, it’s the romance of handwriting that we often yearn for. “I’m an actress, a writer ... a pretty good cook, and a firm believer in handwritten notes,”