Marilyn's Musings

Are you a CSI buff? Do you watch every episode of Cold Case, Forensic Files, Law & Order and all the spinoffs? Then you are one of the people who have turned forensics into a hugely popular field. These days, DNA, fingerprints, and all that technical stuff makes fantastic (or more correctly, realistic ) fodder for fiction. So what better time to introduce a new kind of forensic expert? I’ve been in the field of handwriting analysis for forty years and occasionally, I testify in court cases as an expert witness. My practice includes working on cases of forged wills, anonymous letters, and all sorts of legal chicanery, as well as behavioral profiling. And my clients have never been as savvy or as interested in what their handwriting says about them as they are today. At the same time, there are some who believe that in an age of  the iPod, BlackBerry, and text messaging, handwriting has lost its relevance. But the truth is, your handwriting–chicken scratch though it ma...

Long, long ago and far, far away (well, Anaheim, CA) when I was a senior in high school, my boyfriend’s mother analyzed my handwriting from a book she’d read. Fascinated with the things she wrote about me, when I found a 25 cent booklet at the grocery store (this was 1967, when you could still find things for 25 cents) called Handwriting Analysis, a Guide to Your Hidden Self, I grabbed it up and started studying. For the next ten years I haunted the library and bookstores and read everything I could about handwriting analysis. When I finally discovered there were courses in this field, I was thrilled to bits, and the rest is, well, history. Eventually, I became certified by the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation and a few years later, an attorney contacted me to handle a forgery case. I said I didn’t do handwriting authentication and couldn’t possibly testify in court. The attorney disagreed. He asked, “Do you know handwriting?” Well, yes. I’d been studying and working with handw...