Graphology

The story of the word

Jean-Hippolyte Michon, a French abbé, coined graphologie in the 1870s and built a system out of individual strokes, and within a generation European firms were screening job applicants with it. Controlled studies find no reliable link between handwriting features and personality, and where graphologists appear to score, they are usually reading what the sample says rather than how it looks. Forensic document examination is a separate trade on separate evidence: it compares hands to identify a writer, not to judge one.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → French → English

First recorded

19th century