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Oh hey, it's your old pod, dad Ward. Just me hanging out in a breezy summer tunic and linen coolotts. Ali Ward back with another episode of ologies Are you ready for? Are you ready for a weird one? Came or random one? Kind of a dark one if you're all about bank robberies and or calligraphy and or murder? She wrote, why the writing's on the bathroom wall. You've landed at the correct episode, my friends. But before we get deep into it, let's first think some folks patrons
at Patreon dot com who make the show possible. Thank you to everyone buying merch at ologiesmerch dot com. Thank you to the folks who subscribe and rate and especially review which I read gingerly each week I pluck a fresh one, but your reviews keep it up in the charts. So thank you to this week Anna Banana, who says my first blood meal was acroology, but unlike ticks, I
needed more, lots and lots more. Never did I think I would stay sitting in my car for an extra thirty minutes to finish a podcast about hagfish, But here I am. Thank you, Dad WORDVN podcast The Pleasure an a Banana, It's all mine, Okay. Graphology, let's just roller sleeves up, let's sharpen the pencils. Let's get into it. So in Greek, graphos means to write, so it's a study of writing. Should be simple, right, Yeah, not so much, okay.
So graphology is the study of personality through the analysis of handwriting traits. So can you tell if someone is like organized or anxious, or ambitious or critical through the way they write their fs and t's and ies and such. This was a field pioneered by a Frenchman, Gene Hippolyte Mashon in the mid eighteen hundreds. And before you say, wait a second, analyze a personality via handwriting, isn't that flum flam. It's been called pseudoscience, which is why this
episode doesn't focus much on it. Instead, we're talking all about actual forensic handwriting analysis and signature forgeries and wills and fraud and court cases. So that field is technically called graph analysis, and this guest is an expert in that as well as does graphology on the side. So yeah, this episode title is called graphology, and this expert does do graphology. But really there's not a lot of graphology in this episode. We stick to mostly the scientific penmanship
analysis and expert witness stories. So I was in Nebraska. I was on a tour through the Midwest talking to different ologists, and this was a stop in Lincoln, Nebraska. I think it was Lincoln. It was at our Omaha, got Nebraska. I'm so sorry. So I had looked on a site for expert legal witnesses in the area and I'd come across her name as a graphologist before I
really understood the distinction. Anyway, we met at a conference room in the back of a Kinkos, which I don't even think they call Kinkos anymore, but whatever she came in. She was smartly dressed with curled blonde hair, carrying a folder of paperwork in case we needed visual references. She's kind of like the aunt that makes family barbecues a little more lively and gives you dating advice that you
remember for years. A real hoot. So she completed a four year comprehensive handwriting profiling and forgery detection training program. She developed and taught quote red Flags of Forgery classes, and she teaches handwriting analysis through the Metropolitan Community College in Nebraska. She's so passionate about handwriting. So if you like sitting around and gabbing about weird court cases and upstrokes and downstrokes, this is your lady. So cross your eyes,
dot your t's. Let's hear about why your handwriting is unique, how to protect your signature, which letters of note and ransom notes in history may have been fakes, and how you can chill out by writing stuff with graph analyst, court witness, forensic handwriting experts and also on the side graphologist. But we don't talk about that much. Sylvia Kessler.
About right there.
Yeah, that's great. They're on and they're ready to go. And so, now, Sylvia, you are a graphologist. Yes, yes, How long have you been a handwriting expert? Oh?
Since nineteen eighty that's when I opened my business.
How did you get into it?
I met a lady that was a retiring chiropractor and she it was my teacher, and I was just fascinated. I was just fascinated right from the very beginning with it. And so she said, well, if you're going to study this, you also need to study forensic document examination. And so I was with her for four years training. It's quite in depth and I absolutely love it today. That's how come I still haven't retired.
You're like, I don't want to give it up. I like it too much.
Well, it's exciting.
It's exciting, and it's different every day, even though we're still talking about handwriting and documents and now technology and things like that. It's a very exciting business.
Did you have impeccable penmanship as a child, Yes, you did.
I did.
Do you remember when you'd have to do the cursives? Did you always like doing it?
I learned to write in a one room school house in Pennsylvania, Taylortown, Pennsylvania. So we had grades one through six and we had to use the quill pen with inkwells.
So quick side, what is this Palmer method? Well news to me. Different styles of penmanship over the eras have different names. This hasn't just evolved organically. So back in the seventeen hundreds, that gorgeous curly cue script was called English Round, and following that was another beautifully ornate, oval based Spencerian style script designed by this Victorian pen master Spencer.
But some folks thought it was too gurly, so they created the Palmer method, which was simpler and less beautiful, but it was faster. Now. The Palmer method rained in schoolhouses from like the eighteen forties to the nineteen fifties. So if you wonder why old letters from fifty years ago looked like they're all written by the same great aunt, well maybe because everyone was all palmered up. But of course, the only constant in life is changed and wanting snacks.
And since the Palmer method, a few different types of printing and cursive have been taught in school, so you may have learned the zan or blowser method of printing or you may have learned nothing at all. And now was there something about writing with quill pens that was soothing to you?
Or well, no, that was no, that was just what we had.
We had pencils and quill pens, and the only time we got to write with the quill pen.
Ballpoint pens were.
Invented in nineteen forty and they were invented to go through carbon papers.
It was wartime and it was.
They needed those to go through those duplication of papers, and so those weren't available.
So side note, let's take a trip through time to just appreciate the pen in your purse, which you probably got for free from a car wash or something. So four thousand years ago, Egyptians made pens out of hollow bamboo reads. And then about fifteen hundred years ago, folks are like, I have a great idea. Let's sneak up on a live goose or maybe a turkey. Let's rip a feather out of its butt and sharpen it with, yes, a pen knife, and then use that as a writing instrument.
Everyone loved this idea, except a live birds. And then in the early eighteen twenties, steel nibs were the next great thing. Literacy rates improved because of this advancement, and then only five years later, the fountain pen was patented. Who cares, you say, Well, guess what. Having a pen on your person as opposed to carrying around a jar of ink and a smeary goose feather was huge. All right, this was a big deal, But fountain pens still smeared,
which sucked. So ballpoint pens as we know them, were inspired by quick drying newspaper ink. When this newspaper writer was damn sick and darn tired of spending time refilling his fountain pens and then smearing them all over the page, so he invented the ballpoint pen. Now, ballpoint pens involve pigments suspended in oil or in some cases now a smooth, silky gel in the kind of pens that you borrow from an office made and then quietly refused to give back.
And now it's still chemically manufactured, but it's mostly alcohol or gel, And so that comes into play in forensics to see what kind of ink was there. And so I'm not an expert in ink, but I've studied about inc all of the things that have to do with handwriting or documents I have studied over the course of the years.
What was it like when you were learning for four years? Kind of like it seems almost like an apprenticeship almost with them, It wasn't start to shock.
What more was really funny about it is my teacher said, I don't want to take you a student. I had to beg her to take me as a student because she was just retiring. And I said, I will do anything you want me to do. I will pay you whatever you want me to pay. I will not argue. I will be a good student. So she finally agreed, and I would go every other weekend to Kansas City, that's where she lived.
This, my friends, this is passion. So pour yourself a cup of tea, stare into the morning missed, and ask yourself, what would I drive to Kansas City to learn? And at the end of that question may hang the secret to a happier life. Anyway, I know, what are some things that a handwriting expert learns? Do you learn about the idiosyncrasies of each person's handwriting?
Every person writes differently.
And there's a Supreme Court ruling on this that goes back to I want to say, eighteen forty six something like that.
Hm, the Holland will.
This was not the Holland will, but the Holland will now the wishes of the late Sylvia Ann Holland, whose fortune today btw would be equivalent to thirty two million dollars. So she left half of that to charities, various entities, and the remaining half to her niece, a woman named
Henrietta Howland Robinson. So upon Sylvia's death, Henrietta produced an earlier will that said everything was to go to Henrietta, with an attached note that said, nah, any future will should just be ignored, which is a weird thing to have attached to your will, But anyway, Henrietta produced it
saying give me everything. So based on the number of overlapping downstrokes in the late Sylvia signature, an expert handwriting witness concluded that it was statistically near impossible to do an identical signature, and so this must be a tracing, a forgery.
And this was a fascinating story. A grandson took his grandfather's letters. He kept his grandfather's letters, maybe for sentimental reason, I don't know about that, But in the long run he made out a will, cut and pasted a will, and that's called a holographic will when it's handwritten, leaving everything to him and ruling out the rest of the family. And then he was he got an agreement with a
printer that had some paper that was age appropriate. They printed up this will okay, and they actually he actually got everything. However, the way the story goes is the printer got greedy and wanted more money, and when the grandson wouldn't give it to him, then he an amount. So I think they both went to jail, but I don't know how it ended, but that was that was this ruling that no two people can ever write the same, and mathematicians were brought in and somehow they proved this.
It's like families may have similar writing because sometimes the parents will be teaching their children. However it's just no two people write alike. If you have enough handwriting, you will see the differences.
How has handwriting changed over the decades.
How has it changed like in our society?
Yeah, like because if you look at a document from the eighteen hundreds, it's gorgeous. And if you look at a note that someone leaves, you know, for the mailman it's garbage. So what happened to her beautiful handwriting?
Well, people quit practicing, they quit learning cursive writing over years.
One of the things that was a big.
Influence on why they quit teaching cursive writing was computers. I was invented to ruin your handwriting, because everybody types now and text now, and there's very that people aren't writing as much as they used to. If you get a handwritten card in the mail, you treasure it because.
You get to see it.
And I have collections of handwriting over all these years, and it's just fascinating. Sometimes I'll look at it and go, oh wow, I got to keep this. This is really important to you.
Is there someone in the world or in history who's handwriting you think is the most beautiful any documents you've seen that You're just like Wowser's.
Well, the Declaration of Independence, not only the content of it, but the beauty of it. And every now and then I will run into someone and that still writes like that with all the flourishes, and they practice that for years.
So if you don't like practicing or mastering stuff, because you know, there are things on the internet to look at and naps to take I get it. You can always use this Declaration of Independence font. It's available via p twenty two dot com and it's called what Else Declaration And as long as you can print it on a thin sheet of aged cow tissue, no one will
ever know it's fake. Also, the original penman of that Declaration of Independence document was Timothy Matlack, who was a Quaker and a professional engrosser who lived the ripe old age of ninety nine. So if you're scared of dying young and are convinced that good handwriting will help, you could practice the artful penmanship of calligraphy where you could start kiddos young and then have them compete for money.
There's one competition called the Zaner Blowser National Handwriting Contest, and it offers five hundred bucks in prizes for the neatest penmanship. And this year a ten year old Sarah Hinsley earned the Nicholas Maxim Award in the National Handwriting Contest. One detail she was born without hands, she learned to hold a pencil and write impeccably anyway, and she told reporters she's not sure what she's going to do with
the cash, but she said quote. I felt proud, and I hope others who have challenges learned from me that if you try your hardest, you can do it. So that thing you want to do but you're afraid you can't do, learn from Sarah Hinsley and try hard and then just do the thing.
Nowadays it's a simplified.
Writing that we do, But computers were the biggest influence for the printed word, and printing is just fine, except I can evaluate there's very few extensions, but not at all printing if it's block printing. Those people are usually very constructive, and you get that with engineers architects.
Yeah, well naturally write that way.
Because it feels best to them. So handwriting is a kinesthetic activity. So when you're learning these exercises, they were taught with number two lead pencils and you feel that motion. And I've actually gone to a hospital before where someone had had a head trauma and their motor skills were involved, and I've done the circular motions helped build back coordination.
Has anyone ever come to you just maybe not trauma related, but just said, listen, Sylvia, my handwriting sucks. What can you do to help me? I'm an adult, can you help me with my handwriting? It's not good.
Well, what's interesting is most people will tell me my handwriting is terrible, or I have two different kinds of handwriting, and it's not. It's seldom. I've only seen one or two people in my whole career that had two separate different handwritings.
So let's address the elegant elephant in the room graphology proper. Okay, this again not considered heart science. So graphology hangs out kind of in the same lunch table as astrology or numerology or chirology, which is a technical term for palm reading, no joke. Should I do an episode on that? Maybe I will. Anyway, this show is ologies, and Sylvia is a legit forensic handwriting witness by day and a graphologist on the side. So let's just ask her opinion on
that ology. What do you think handwriting says about a person's personality?
A lot?
Yeah?
How so?
Now, and there's let me qualify this. Not everybody that says they're a handwriting expert is a handwriting expert.
Okay.
So they'll read a book and say, oh, I can go make twenty bucks on this or something at them all or at the carnival or whatever. In fact, when I've been on I'm an expert witness about documents and signatures on documents, and I have to prove that to the benefit of the judge or jury. And so I've been asked when I was getting qualified in the beginning, well, is this like what they do over at the carnival or at.
The state Fair.
No, it isn't, It isn't. Yeah, I said, I don't know what they do with the state Fair because I've never been hired to go over there anyway. So to get back to your question, cursive writing is now coming back, and penmanship is now coming back into the school systems
in some states. The last I heard, there were like twelve or thirteen states that have put that back into their educational system because it does build discipline, It builds self determination, builds all the characters that you can find.
Now, when I get.
A court case, my reputation in that area, feel that arena.
That is a really heavy duty.
And now tell me a little bit about the forensic side of it. What kind of cases do you get called in for?
Oh, you know what, I get unfortunate. There's a lot of probate cases, which means when somebody dies, there's wills that are question, there's wills that show up that counter other wills. There's forged deeds of trust. There's a lot, and it splits families. I bet I will say to them, let's sit down at the table and discuss this. I'll tell the attorney get the other attorney, because this is going to cause a divide in this family that will never be healed unless we do it now. Some attorneys
will look at me like I'm a bleeding heart. Others will say, you know, that's a good idea. Maybe we can get it settled. So when I come back with the true answers, they will usually come to some kind of agreement. And they don't always forgive one another unfortunately.
But sorry, I didn't mean to do it.
Does one person say well, I have a will and it's the latest will, and as someone else says, well, I have a will from nineteen seventy five, but he was in maybe a better state of mind here, or you don't you have.
Medical records to back that up.
It's called capacity, okay, if the person had capacity at the time they were signed in it, and if they do not have capacity whoever's there with them at the moment can influence them quite easily.
So what else does Sylvia's job entail.
That's just one part of it.
I work with stocks or to right now, I have six cases, once with a fortune five hundred company on fraudulent invoices. One of them is with a artists that agreements were broken and he thinks that they've forged his name on something. It's just really interesting the different cases will's contracts. I've done athletic contracts that were forged.
Really yes, And.
How do you see when something is forged? Where do you even start?
Well, you start by getting known signatures of the person that signature is supposed to be, and then you do the habitual patterns. There's people cannot help, but they have patterns.
You write your name more than.
Anything else that's true in your whole life, and so there will be patterns, habitual characteristics in your signature that you don't even see. You don't see it because it's unconscious. And so that's the first thing.
She recalled. Another case that went down in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
I had the man's writing from for over six years. He was in his eighties. I had handwriting over sixty years. This, even though the writing changed as he got older, you could see how he came out of being a young man and got more serious and more efficient in what he was doing and came into his own and then you could see where his health started to decline over those sixty years.
But the same habitual patterns were.
There, and so was it a forgery?
And so in that case it was a forgery. Yes, what's it like when the well they settled. I'm there in the courtroom after this long journey and they settled. Oh, when the opposing attorney looked at the report and looked at my illustrations. Next thing you know, they're back talking to the judge and it was all settled. Oh my gosh.
And now what other kinds of things come up when you're doing forensic handering analysis? Like is there the type of paper is there? The type of ink is it?
The hard these are all things, but they're there.
Now. Our technology is about electronically lifted signatures, ye that have been manufactured from other documents. And it's amazing how much of our signatures are out there.
I bet yeah.
And now when it comes to electronic documents. How do you feel about things like docu sign where it's just essentially you sign a PDF.
Oh, I know, I'm worried about We just bought a house. Yeah, we just bought a house, and yeah we got some final paperwork in the mail. Yeah, but it doesn't have any of our original signatures on it.
Yeah, it's all electronic. That seems I just had to do a bunch of docu sign things too, and I'm like, this isn't even my handwriting, and all I'm doing is clicking a button. But that's how is that legit?
They can check your where it's coming from, your IP Pewter and stuff like that, your IP address.
Okay, all right, and now what about signing the back of your credit cards? Should you do that or should you not?
Well, if you don't, it's not going to be accepted. But what I do is I say, ask for ID.
Okay. See that's a good tip from someone who is a professional forensic graphologist.
And if they if we're in a restaurant and the person the waiter, waitress, whoever, takes our credit card and comes back and they don't ask for it, I said, turn over that card and look at it.
And even see some id And have there been any huge forgery cases in history that have really captured your attention?
No? No, well I'll tell you why.
I've studied some of those and I can't even remember their names, you know. I think probably one of the most famous one is the Howard Hughes diaries. They were all forged.
Oh side note, if you're like, what okay, Howard Hughes, businessman, film director, pilot, wealthy person, became a recluse and in the nineteen seventies a few scoundrels devised a scheme to have artists mimic his handwriting and they got this lucrative book deal so many dollars based on this autobiography which was totally fake, and they were found out and the main perp, a guy called Clifford Irving, went to prison
for like a year and a half. But during that time he gave up smoking and he took up weightlifting, so maybe it was like a bit of a glow up for him. Then he wrote a book about it, and he made gobs of money. He was married six times. They made a movie called The Hoax starring Richard gear So yay, crime does pay, and after this whole scandal in the nineteen seventies. Hughes died just a few years later, likely still very annoyed. Now, any other cases that Sylvia's been really taken by.
I'll tell you something though, that this fascinated me. I saw some I'm a Marilyn Monroe's handwriting in one of Oprah's magazine years ago. And then I saw a letter that was sold at Southby's for some big amount that was not the same handwriting now, and I go, WHOA, I should really take the time to look into that. But nobody's asked me about that, or but I noticed it when I saw it.
So little googling turned up two different sad letters supposedly in Marilyn's handwriting, one to her acting teacher Lee Strasberg on Hotel bel Air stationery, which was written in loopy cursive kind of slinted forward as if leaning into a wind. It read, my will is weak, but I can't stand anything. I sound crazy, but I think I am going crazy.
It's just that I get before a camera and my concentration and everything I'm trying to learn leaves me and I feel like I'm not existing in the human race at all, so this cursive looks nothing like another one written to her psychiatrist, which was in print, saying, I guess I've always been deeply terrified to really be someone's wife, since I know from life that one cannot love another really. Sylvia says she'd love to sit down and compare them now.
She didn't leave a note before her overdose of barbituates at thirty six, and it was ruled a probable suicide by corners. Sylvia notes that a slim percentage less than thirty percent by my research, do leave notes in such a tragic occurrence, And as your pod dad, just a reminder that folks are here to listen, and the National Suicide Hotline is there twenty four hours a day one eight hundred two seven three eight two, five y five.
I'll add it in the show notes now. Another famed note left by Nirvana singer Kirk Cobaine has been the subject of widespread conspiracy theories. The last few lines raised a bunch of eyebrows for decades, but Dateline at one point passed it off to four handwriting experts who concluded that it was either in Kurt's own penmanship or it was inconclusive.
I've had several cases that I knew or murder, we just couldn't get it. We couldn't get the attorneys to move forward with that, or we couldn't get it investigated properly.
Mm hm oh my gosh.
And it's heartbreaking. It really is heartbreaking.
And it's interesting that something like handwriting can come in to speak for the person who's gone, you know.
Oh, absolutely absolutely, And so I consider that part of what I do is I have to take a stand for the handwriting. The truth is always in the handwriting in the papers. So you get enough of those papers and enough of the handwriting, and you can figure it out. Anonymous writing hate mail.
If we're texting and typing more than we're writing, are.
We leaving behind evidence of your language patterns?
Yes, you are, Oh really so. Our language patterns are something that means.
Language patterns are something that I have looked at before. Another case I had it was about the known handwriting had never been more than maybe six or seven lines of a paragraph on a page, and then here's this big, long letter. It's indented, it's typed, but it's indented, and the language patterns are completely different than what the person used and that was on a harassment suit that got solved real quickly.
Oh wow, Well, here's a fun little confidence booster to remind you about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.
You get your image out of work, You get your image out of production, whether it's work in school or work. It's not about the pay. It's about the accomplishment. That's where people get their confidence. It's not something that just comes down of the sky and blesses you. You get it from You become confident by doing things and that
builds the confidence. So sometimes people will say to me, well, I want to have more confidence, And I said, so, what kind of person would it make you if you had a lot of confidence and you didn't listen to feedback, right, which we have a lot of those today, don't we?
Yes, we do. And now what do you think about the daily habit of journaling or doing morning pages, of just connecting pender pencil to paper. What do you think that does?
I think it's a wonderful one. It's wonderful. Not only is therapy, it's wonderful to focus. It's wonderful to have that time for yourself to really get your thoughts down on paper, and when you go back and read that years later, you go, oh, my goodness, that is so interesting because you can see it in your you know, I can see it in my handwriting over the years. How it's changed.
Any movies about forgeries or handwriting that you like movies?
I don't know.
You know, there's been a lot of movies where CSI you can peep. You know. The thing about going to trial now is a jury expects all of it to be like CSI Declaration of Independence, and it's not always like CSI. Sometimes they'll say things and I'll go, that is not true.
How can you say that? Who wrote the script?
You know? And I've had several people that are writing books that have contacted me with different handwriting questions, and I've given them information about what they could do, or where they should look, or that sort of thing.
You know.
One time I had a case and the attorney told me he couldn't get any handwriter. I said, well, then we're you're going to lose his case. And I said, I can tell you from what I have this man has been a real scrapper. This is a small town. Go down to the police station and ask him if he's ever been arrested. That's public information. You're an attorney, Get out of your office and go down there and
get me some handwriting. Well, sure enough, Yeah, he had been arrested three times for assault in bars.
And here it is.
Just exactly what I needed to prove that that was his signature. It was really an interesting case. What was he guilty of? Conspiracy to defraud a bank? Wow?
Oh my gosh.
Single.
And now I have questions from listeners. Can I ask him from our susteners? Yeah they know I got listeners. Yeah, okay, patrons. Before we get to your numerous excellent questions, a few words from sponsors that I like. And these sponsors make it possible to donate to a related charity. And this week it goes to care dot org's Letters of Hope initiative, which encourages folks to send letters of support to refugees who have fled unimaginable violence and persecution in search of
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Okay your questions. There were one hundred and ninety three questions, so I'm not going to ask you all of them. No, we'll run through. We'll just rapid fire. Sure, we'll get as many lightning round as we can This next question was also asked by Ariel Emmab and Ira Gray. Liza Elizabeth wants to know how accurate is forensic handwriting analysis and is it a reliable source of evidence?
It is if you have someone that's well trained them well qualified. Okay, you have to prove your case. You can just write a report. You know that happens a lot where they write a report. It's my opinion.
Well that and what two bucks?
We can go get a cup coffee. Jessica Bailey wants to know is it true that people will slap your handwriting tend to have a higher IQ not necessarily. Okay, so there you have it. This has been a known fact for decades, and one nineteen eighty four study published in Human Learning, the Journal of Practical Research and Applications states it is concluded that the lack of a significant correlation between handwriting legibility and IQSC clearly disconfirms the popular
stereotype of illegible writers as unintelligent. Boom So Lacy Gilbert, Lisa Burbridge, Katie Spino, Danielle Rivera, and Deli Dames who also asked about that, and maybe have terrible penmanship but sharp minds. Breathe easy letter slobs. You're all good now. The following folks all had a similar question to Jenny Bergstrums Caitlin Carter, Jessica Beard, Raykasha, Madeline Rogers, Irony and Rosaria,
and Nera. Jenny Bergstrom asks, does handwriting change over time because your personality or interests or maturity changes.
All of it changes, physical, emotional, spiritual, all of it changes.
What about when people dot their eyes with hearts? What do you think about that?
There's something about them they want that's called an idiosyncrasy, and that means there's something about them that's really different, and they're kind of into the love, you know, sweetness and love and all of that. You know, I'm a romantic like that.
Michelle Grondline Michelle Grondine wants to know what's the most commonly forged piece of writing.
Oh, I would have.
To say, let's see, most commonly forged piece of writing. That's a very good question. I would say probably will's So the most common OH, checks would probably be Yeah.
One, is it better to write a check in sharpie so that no one you.
Can actually buy pins now that they cannot bleach out the writing. One of the you know, I want to encourage everybody to get a locked mailbox or make sure that their mail is secure, because one of the common easy accesses is to go along a line of mailboxes that are just regular mailboxes. Palm down goes through the mail.
If there's checks going out, they take those. If there's birthday cards or cards look like they're cards of some kind that might have money in them, they take those, open them up, take the checks, bleach them, and honestly they will still pass those checks.
For more on how bleach does that? Just hit that old disinfectiology episode from a few weeks ago. Bleach not just for toilets and pools, It's also great for mail fraud. Just kidding, don't do that.
So so get a locked mailbox, get a locked mailbox, and get up a You can get the pins at any of the stationary stores.
That's for forgery.
I've actually had people call me up and asked me if I could come and forge a document that they needed somebody's name on a document.
Could I come right away?
What you say?
I said, sure, where do you want me to come? I got the address and then I called the police and told them that.
They were expecting me.
Nice, You're like wrong person to can.
With us.
Oh wow, this is interesting. What kind of document is that?
I told him?
You know, the scam scam scam busting crimes.
Speaking of crimes, Stephanie Brokeyes and Derek Allen also had a similar question to Sophie's coming up. Sophie Beer wants to know what's your favorite crime that was solved with the help of handwriting experts?
What is the one?
What was your favorite crime that's been solved by the help of handwriting experts? Anything historical?
Historically? I think probably the Hughes Diaries.
Yeah, uh is one son your car pedic? Cool? Question? Is handwriting gender related at all? Even though you know gender's fluid and gender schmender? But why do boys typically tend to have less neat handwriting than girls?
That's that is a broad generalization, because I have in my files handwriting of men that has all the flourishes, even more flourishes, and you have more Claire than you have.
Wow.
Sylvia had taken a peek at my little binder earlier and decided, based on my flair that I am inquisitive with perfectionist tendencies, but that I am not moody, and I did not have the heart or the bass to tell her that I am moody as hell. And I can get bummed out for hours just after seeing a dead bee.
And in your writing, and so there's three things that you cannot tell from handwriting. Everything else is open. So the three things are whether it's a male or female, whether it's right or left handed, or how old they are. You cannot tell exact age those three things. Everything else, if you have enough handwriting and you're trained well enough, you can figure out a complete profile on the person. Even though lefties do a little smearing, they know wow. No,
that is a misconception that's across the board. Another misconception is like if you're going to if you're going to forge something, you better make it different. Because you cannot write your name the same way twice in your entire lifetime.
Oh, so you can have similar patterns.
There's habitual patterns of variation. And so this is why it takes so long to study this. This is not just something that you pick up a book and read it, and yeah, you can get.
Gather a lot of information that way.
Tyler Ke wants to know when was the first case of a ransom letter being written with newspaper clippings, And is that to fool people so that they can't be traced.
I don't know. He'd have to google that. That's why we have Google, is because we don't know. I don't know about the ransom notes.
Okay, I'll look that up. This, as it turns out, is an excellent question because it pulled back the curtain to reveal a big flashing neon sign that read in
curly script flim flam. So apparently people don't even ransom note like that, according to design historian doctor Arden Stern in her thesis the ransom note effect, cut and pacee typography in American visual culture, the imagery of a note penned by a criminal with cut and paste letters originated from the Sherlock Holmes crime novel The Hound of the
Baskervilles from the early nineteen hundreds. But before you go doing evil with the written word, be warned that your printer might be secretly encoding its own signature via tiny yellow micro doots that show up under blue light, and it's on everything you print. Oops, so don't go crime in. Also, y'all know I'm not a big true crime lover, please
see Get Sad about a Dead Bee. But many of you brought up a certain famous handwritten ransom note involved in the nineteen ninety six death of a small child. And there's plenty of media spotlight on this case already, so I'm sure I don't have to name it. But before today I didn't even know that there was a ransom note involved. But an overwhelming percentage of forensic handwriting analysts agree that the ransom note is in the mom's handwriting, and either way that life was still lost. Now, what
about life savers out there? This next question was also asked by Nikki d Abigail Manlin, Kate Chapman, and Michael Satambuka. Sera Terry and a lot of other people asked what is the old or is the old stereotype true that all doctors have sloppy handwriting? Where did that even come from in the first place?
Oh, my goodness, Every doctor that I've ever seen has it. I can say that they.
All have it. I think.
I think where it comes from, though, is speed and acceleration when a doctor goes through the residency. It's completely insane what they put doctors through. I have several friends that have told me horror stories about working. You know, yes, all those long hours. I'm doing double shifts and they're grinding all the time. It's very stressful, and when you get stressed, you tend to make more of the mountain peaks. Do you imagine that? Yes?
And Donald Trump's.
Handwriting is a really good example of that. He shows his signature all the time and it's just pure mountain peaks. Donald's is like his stubbornness shows up because they're like tepis.
Okay, So side note, I Google image searched the president's signature and it did not It didn't remind me of anything related to indigenous people's culture. It's more like a few people standing at the forefront of a big crowd,
but they're all wearing hats, but like pointy ones. Any who's all So A bunch of people had this next question, including Laura Shelti, Lawrence Ashra Coulhech, car Robin Cohen, Robin Cohen, and Charlotte rudrig taren Haik asked, there's such a rise in mobile devices that they seem to sign their name more with their finger than an actual pen these days, and they don't think it looks anything like the real signature.
So does the method of finger signing capture really hold up? Like, what do you think done?
I've done a couple of drug cases where the where they were serious drug cases on narcotics and where people were selling prescriptions and the signatures that they gave me. It was amazing that you could see the patterns in there. It wasn't perfect, but you could see the handwriting, the habitual patterns that I mentioned. You could see those on the ones that this one person had really even on a finger swipey even on and it's it was on where you just write out your name with your finger.
Timothy Dikes asks what is the best way to train your handwriting both in print and cursive?
To get a go online and get a penmanship print out and make sure you have on on the cursive writing, make sure that you have your upper loops, your lower loops, and your your middle zone loops.
Oh how many other people asked about different handwritings. So many of yous, including Jenny Bergstrom, Kaitlyn Carter, Jessica Beard, Ray kash At, Madeline Rogers I, Renee Rosaria, and Aira Sonia Karb Graham, Tedtersall, Rachel Wahlberg, Troy Clarkson, Caleb Patten, Don e Wald, Emily Hobin, Kelly Bradenthal, Cody Albert, Wayne Brantley, Mma Fiory, Jen Athenas and Casey Arden had a great question, why the heck do I have eighty seven different handwritings?
Sometimes it's so neat it looks like a typeface. Sometimes it's illegible. Sometimes I have a curly letters, sometimes not. What is up with this? Jen Anathos says, yes, what she said.
Well, that depends, you know. That's something I would have to look at.
But generally speaking, people will tell me they have different handwritings, and all it means is sometimes it's sloppy, and sometimes it's neaterter, sometimes.
It's bigger and bigger.
If we are real scattered, if our energy is real scattered, and we have too many balls in the air, so to speak, then our handwriting will be large and.
Sloppy. Generally speaking, Now, one way that you can calm.
Yourself is to write a sentence and then just keep making it smaller and smaller and smaller, and you will actually feel internally, you will feel a sense of focus. Wow, it's like meditation. It will bring you into focus very quickly, just as long as it takes you, you know, like a few minutes just to write three or four sentences and making it smaller. Your mind knows what to do with these things. It's really cool. And like you could
have a child. If you have a child that's having a fit or tantrum, you can have them draw a line and then draw another line a little shorter, another line a little shorter, and even if you're directing their hand, they will still calm down.
Oh that's great tip. I love this question from jen Anathas. She says, why does it seem some kinds of pens make my handwriting nicer and some are not as good for my handwriting? And is there an ultimate pen?
Like?
What is the most expensive pen, what's the nicest? What do you have a preferred pen?
I have a preferred pin.
I use a uniball okay, and I only sign I only sign documents important documents.
With blue ink okay.
And I use a Uni ball rolling writer and I never use ballpoint pin. Ballpoint pin will seep into the fibers of a paper. In a few years, I discovered that when I was going through some original checks that had been written in ballpoint pen?
Are ballpoint pens bad for writing checks?
What the fuck?
So?
I looked into this and apparently most ballpoint pens are die based and they're easy to wash using a solvent of matching polarity like nail polish remover. But uniball and other gel pens are pigment based and you can't remove pigments without destroying the paper. Also, so text your crush cut bangs, get yourself a nice gel pen live for today. What about point size? Are you a point five? Are you fine?
I like five to seven?
Now?
What do you think I hold my pencil on my third finger. I think we're supposed to hold it like this. Is there a best way to hold your pens? It's, however, is most comfortable for you? Yeah? I think I Yeah, I do it on the third And.
To answer her question, each person will have a preference for what kind of pen and paper. I love papers. I have more paper at my house than you can imagine. And I love pins, pencils, And I don't like those erasers on there that blur. I like the white gummy erasers that get it cleanly swept off.
So many maybe lefties had the same question, including Jack kellaher Katy Halverson, One Way, Ariel Bruce, Katie Chavez, Wayne Brentley, don Edwald, Michelle Grondine, Sophie Cosno, Nathan Elgrim, Jessica iron A, and and a lot of people had this question. Hannahleise asks why is the right hand considered to be the proper hand for writing? Does it have a practical or religious background? I know my sister went to Catholic school and then nuns wouldn't let her use her left handy.
Isn't it?
You know we program our children by where we put their silverware. Oh, really, think about that for a moment. We were always taught that this is how you set the table.
Sylvia pause here to get a cough drop. In a Catholic school, they would come and smack you because sinistra left. You know, the hand of the devil.
I know, it's just superstitious stuff.
Yeah, right.
Most things are being developed for right handed people because of that very fact that we were forced to write with our right hand, or program based on where our silverware was.
So I recommend that if you're with your children, you've just put the silverware in the middle of the plate and let them decide which hand they want to use.
Nice.
Isn't that a good idea?
Yeah?
Do you know what a hagfish is? A hagfish is a kind of a slimy eel like fish that doesn't have a backbone, and it exudes just gallons of mu kiss. But they coil into a little coil, and some of them coil one way and some of them coil the other way. They have right handed and left handed preferences. Isn't that cute, these little hagfish at the bottom of the ocean. I think that's wonderful.
And so if you look in nature, that's the same truths.
And so even back in the cave dwellings, back in Caesar's time, he would select his people by their handwriting.
He would.
Yeah, that's what he told me.
Anyway back in the day.
That's something that I read in one of my historical books about handwriting.
Oh wow, that surprises me. So back then, soide note, there were people who acted as assistants and then they just take notes as orators orated. They were called a menuensis, which sounds a lot like a medical condition that I don't want. What do you think of celebrities who are asked to give autographs. Are they giving away their signature to everyone who asked for it? Is there any security?
Ahoman? Not really.
Well, it's going to be probably.
It probably gets pretty sloppy as it goes along, because I've watched them sign these autographs and they do it just you know, there in a hurry. Some of them will actually have different pins for them to use and then they take the pen back. So I think that's fine. I don't think that there's a problem. That is where the most fraud is committed, though, as in memorabilia, So be very cautious about that.
Yeah, because if you have some scribbled on poster halle Berry, how do you know that she actually signed it.
You don't unless you have some of her known signatures, and there can be natural variation. It could be that she had a signature for her public and a signature for her own personal account.
Do you have any autographs from famous people that you treasure?
Well, James Taylor. I actually James Taylor signed a guitar for me. One of my good friends took me to see James Taylor and got a picture of me with James Taylor. He's who always been one of my favorites. Yeah, and he's signed a guitar for me.
What do you think of a signature?
Didn't pay much attention to it, truthfully.
No, people think I look at everything. No I don't.
I have had people's personal diaries that had all kind of stuff in it, and I'm just looking at the characteristic Yeah.
And then when I took.
It back, the guy said, well, what did you think about all of that? And I said, oh, what I said, you didn't read it? And I said, no, I don't read the content. Usually now in forensics, I have to read the content.
But it's just funny.
It's just funny when it comes to, you know, leaving behind a will or something. I talked to a panatologist who is a grief counselor, and she said that written wills in an envelope just saying yo, this is my will, those are legit. Do you think people should write those in their own handwriting instead of typing them?
Absolutely?
Okay, anything that's typed has doubt on it.
Okay.
And if you write it out as call a holographic will, and each state has different rules on it, jot it down to watch piece paper it's I think it's terrific to have one typed by an attorney or a law firm and signed and witnesses. And then I also think that on your personal stuff that you want to give away, if you have that in your handwriting and includes your handwriting.
With it, oh good idea, you.
Know, letters and put the evidence there.
Yeah, makes your job easier.
Well, it makes the job for the errors easier too, because I have seen families just say I can't find anything.
Yeah, I know, so leave it with just leave it behind. That's a great idea, you know. I think we always think, oh, with a will, you've got to type it up and have a notarye prace. But it better have something than nothing.
Well, the notaries are always suspect to these days because not everybody keeps a notary. Log I have one case where the man, let's see, his first wife died, he got married the second time. She had three children, he had two. They were married for like thirty years. The man dies and he leaves everything to his wife. If she's deceased, then it's to go to the children. So
here's what happens. He dies, she gets everything, and then she lives quite a long time, maybe ten years longer, and then she leaves everything to her kids and rules out his and each one of those girls lost a million dollars.
Oh boy.
And it came primarily from his retirement. But because of the way it was written, it wasn't spelled out.
You'd think the step kids would be like, we know this is rightfully yours. You would think with that much money, yeah, he has stepsisters.
Indeed, I saw the will of the mother and someone had written over it in written over her say it was a fraudulent will, the signatures on it, and yet they couldn't do anything about it because so much time had passed it.
I mean, they should just do a CSI handwriting and you should be the producer of it.
Well, sure, absolutely, and just show me the money.
Okay, and then you'll show you the signature on the check. First. What do you dislike about your job? What sucks about your job?
Sometimes it's stressful because everything seems to come at one time.
Yeah, Like I had.
These five cases.
It all came this week, and that doesn't count what I've got on the back burner waiting. And so sometimes it'll it'll come all at one time, and it's with heavy deadlines and stuff like that.
But I wouldn't even say I hate it. It's distressful. Yeah, and I love my job.
I love the fact that I can do it, and I feel very competent in doing it, and it's just.
A lot of fun.
Yeah, what's your favorite thing about what you do or about handwriting?
Helping an attorney solve the case, whether it's in probate or helping a family that's got a problem child and they don't know what to do. And I can't tell you how many gifted children. I can think of three right off the top of my head where they were in trouble at school, but it's because they were bored.
Out of their head. They weren't turning into homework. They were quite gifted.
And one little boy, he was eleven years old. I insisted that the parents take him and get his IQ tested and he was off the charts in math. And here he is just suffering. I mean school was like prison to him. Yeah, and he was just bored and there's just yeah, he was just bored.
So helping people, helping families, making a measurable difference, yea.
Yeah, things that I can results.
Yeah, do people write you handwritten thank you notes, because they should not very often they should they but they will usually send me emails. They'll send me emails and they'll express their gratitude.
And that's sweet.
It's it is sweet.
Yeah, And do you write HANDWRT? Think you know?
Absolutely?
Of course you do. Of course I do. And if nothing else, all of us listening should just remember how important.
Go buy some nice notepaper and think of somebody that's been important to you and just write them a nice, little, sweet little note that says you're so important in my life, thank you for all the things. I have a friend that I was struggling with my oven racks, scrubbing them meticulously, and I could not get them clean, and I was just ready to There were an upper there's an upper oven, and the lower oven. There's six racks altogether, and I'm going, God,
I'll never get through with these. And I'm not a domestic goddess anymore. I just can't do this. And so I was complaining to my friend, and she said, put him in your dishwasher on the highest temperature and put two pods in there and it'll be just fine. And they were.
So young. People have a lot to contribute to us.
Do you write her thank you note? You gotta write her think, Oh yeah I did.
I wrote her a thank you note from Brian Andreas's collection. He's an artist that does these quirky things and I love his work.
Ps. I looked up the stationary and I expected to find like an ornate, cream colored paper, maybe with gold foiled Venetian floral motifs. But no, his work very bold colors with sketchy modern drawings, very cute.
And so I said, You've helped me with so many things, but those oven racks, that was off the chart.
What's her name?
Her name is Roxand Brand and she's in Warwick, New York.
Well, now, Roxanne Brand is gonna help a lot of people with their oven racks. There's a lot of people that are be like, but I'm in the dishwasher for two pods. So thanks for hot temperature. Okay, hot hot two pods. Yeah, thanks Roxanne of Warwick, Thank you so much for being on. This is amazing, You're welcome, This is so much.
For coming to Nebraska.
Absolutely worth it. Thank you so ask smart people stupid questions and maybe treat yourself to a stationary store. Write someone in a letter, Get yourself a little notebook, Wake up early, let your mind dribble out of a pen. No judgment Now. To learn more about Sylvia's work, She's at Forgery Deetection Experts dot com and more links will be up at aliwar dot com, slash ologies slash Graphology. We're at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at ali
Ward with one L on both. I'm also on the CBS show Innovation Nation every Saturday morning, and I host my own science show on the CW called Did I Mention Invention? And I'm on the Netflix kid series Brainchild. You can get Ologies merch at ologiesmerch dot com, tag itt ologies merch on Instagram and we'll repost that photo look at us. Thank you to Shannon Felts and Bonnie Dutch of the podcast You Are That for managing the merch, and thank you Aaron Talburn and Hanle Lippo for adminting
the Facebook group full of wonderful people. If you're not on Facebook, you can also join the subreddit Ologies podcast to chat about episodes and science stuff there. Thank you Jared Sleeper of the mental health podcast My Good Bad Brain for assistant editing and helping with some extra research this week, and of course to the penman who keeps it all in shipshape, Stephen Ray Morris of the podcast s Jurassic Right and the per Cast for stitching it
all together every week. Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the music, and he's in the band Islands and they're a great band. Now, if you stick around to the end of the episode, you know I tell you a secret this week. The secret is I got a dog at Long Last. I've wanted one for like ten years. She's a gray little rescue poodle mix with giant ears. She looks like a gremlin,
and so her name turned out to be Gremy. But before naming her, I asked all the folks on the Patreon page what their aunt's names were, because I wanted to name my pups somehow after them. Just for making the show possible, It's totally changed my life. It's given
me the guts to finally get a dog. And so her name is officially Gremlin gr em Ly and n aka grem Linda because I crunched the numbers and Linda and Lynn were some of the most popular ants names that y'all had, so part of her name is named after y'all on Patreon, So thank you Patreon. I have a dog. Now I get to keep making this podcast every week. It's the best job ever. Also a granola for dinner while writing this, but I had like three bowls. I feel so sick now, but.
I was so good.
Okay, bye bye pacodermatology, hobbiology or doo zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology, metatology, menthology, seriology, elinology, and now we're going to talk about loops.