Anne Carson, the Canadian writer, has written an article about writing, since she developed Parkinson’s Disease. Embarrassed by how her handwriting has got so much worse, the title of her article, quoting Confucius, apparently, was ‘Beware the Man Whose Handwriting Sways Like a Reed in the Wind’. We may be embarrassed by our handwriting because we’re embarrassed by our actual personalities. And typing has a ‘handwriting’, just like pen and paper. Lesley Smith’s 2023 book ‘Handwritten: Remarkable People on the Page’, gives us a chance to look at the handwriting of some famous figures. Is it unfair to judge their personalities from their handwriting?

Is this an issue worth exploring for academic writers, embarrassed by ‘revealing’ their own personalities through their writing? Or should we ignore it, as one of the most trusted professions – doctors – seem to have terrible handwriting?

What we say and how we say it may of course tell two stories rather than one. Rom Harré noted how a handwritten sign may seem to mean the same as a printed one, but a handwritten sign saying ‘warning – nuclear power station’ would be worrying, wouldn’t it?

Handwriting that ‘sways in the wind’ might represent a person who sways in the wind too. The politician Tony Benn said there were two kinds of politician: signposts (who always pointed in one direction or another) and weather vanes (who swayed with the wind). As academics, we shouldn’t sway too much, but then again, as the climate changes, shouldn’t we be prepared to change? Perhaps we should be climate vanes?

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