What Your Signature Says About You?
Courtesy Hugh Wilson for MSN
We sign cheques, contracts, tax forms and all sorts of other important and not-so-important documents. We also tend to sign
letters, even if the body of text is printed. And the finest writers of love letters in history tended to end with the flourish of a
flamboyant signature. In other words, signatures are important. And in a world of type-written correspondence, your
signature is the one piece of writing that is still up for interpretation.
Handwriting experts say that recipients pick up on the messages your
signature sends, if only subliminally. According to graphologist Fiona
Mackay, your signature "is how you want to be seen. Being the writing
most often seen by the rest of the world, it's your public face."
We all develop flourishes that mark our signatures out, and our signatures serve to identify us. Signatures can be copied, but
it's much harder to forge a signature than to forge normal handwriting, which is (or should be) written for clarity. We learn to
write, and then we develop a signature. But unlike learning to write, we don't follow rules when we are creating a signature.
Some people practice their signatures for a long time in a bid to make them unique. Other signatures are just names written
quickly without taking the pen from the page. Whatever they are, they are clues to our personalities. So here are some
signature facts, and some clues as to what yours might be giving away about you:
Showy Signatures
Men — especially young men — often develop flamboyant and showy signatures. That's fine, if you want to present a
flamboyant, showy personality — if you're an artist or entertainer, say, or some other kind of public figure. But handwriting
analysts say that if you sign off a sober, conservative business letter in this way, it will create confusion. Are you a serious
proposition or not? And you don't want a potential customer to be confused about who you really are.People in the public eye
often develop large, showy signatures, because they want to appear larger than life. If you don't, you might want to tone the
flourishes down.
Big Signatures
You want to come across as confident, but not over-confident, and your signature can present you as both. A signature that is
too big and bold, especially if it's much bigger than the rest of the text, could mark you out as arrogant.In some situations
you may want to come across as bold, of course, but remember to reduce the size of your scrawl for those occasions when
appearing over confident would not be to your advantage. And a large signature that is also too showy may backfire, by
indicating feelings of inadequacy, say experts. You want to be noticed. You might even want to be seen as a bit of an
extrovert. But try too hard and it looks a little forced, and not the real you.
Small Signatures
If overly large signatures sometimes give the wrong impression, so do small and unobtrusive ones. As you might expect, tiny
signatures, especially if smaller than the body of text, indicate a desire not to be noticed. Shy, introverted people often have
very small signatures. If you want your signature to show a natural confidence and ease, go for the middle ground: bigger
than the surrounding text, but not so big as to dominate the page.
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