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    The Graphologist's Alphabet
    The Graphologist's Alphabet
    The Graphologist's Alphabet
    Ebook122 pages41 minutes

    The Graphologist's Alphabet

    By Eric Singer

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    About this ebook

    Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateSep 6, 2016
    ISBN9781473356351
    The Graphologist's Alphabet
    Author

    Eric Singer

    Eric Singer is an American hard rock and heavy metal drummer, best known as a member of Kiss, portraying The Catman originally played by Peter Criss. He has also performed with artists such as Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Lita Ford, Badlands, and Gary Moore as well as his own band ESP. In his career, Singer has appeared on over 75 albums and 11 EPs.

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      Una de las obras más emblemáticas de la Grafología americana.
      Julio Cavalli

    Book preview

    The Graphologist's Alphabet - Eric Singer

    CHAPTER I

    THE COPY-BOOK ALPHABET AND THE INDIVIDUAL’S ALPHABET

    THE beginning of writing started, not with the alphabet representing sounds, but with pictures representing objects. The individual sketches which initiated this form of communication later developed into agreed sketches, each sketch representing one object, either by picturing the object itself (bird for a bird) or an attribute characteristic and representative of the object (man with a stick for father). Some of these pictorial writings, like the Chinese, developed further by depicting symbols for qualities (sun for bright) or situations for categories (two women in one house for a quarrel). Several nations besides the Chinese, especially among primitive races, still use pictorial writing.

    It was the Egyptians, who, after first having invented the pictorial writing of the hieroglyphics, later started something which already approached an alphabet. The Assyrians pictured not an object, but a syllable.

    The first nation to invent a real alphabet in which the drawing of a code of letters represented sounds (consonants and semi-vowels) was the great trading nation of early antiquity, the Phoenicians. Phoenician traders from Egypt brought home Egyptian writings, and based on these, the Phoenicians invented a complete alphabet of twenty-two letters, each representing a different sound. The Phoenicians invented not only the alphabet, but also a numerical system in which the letters of the alphabet at the same time represented a certain number. They also invented money, the currency system which is still the basis of our monetary system.

    The Phœnician alphabet, in which the letters had no clear pictorial meaning but were a code and index of sounds, enabled the writer to join these sounds together to words which now presented themselves to the reader as a currency of communication instead of the earlier system of depicting objects.

    The Greeks took over the Phoenician alphabet and elaborated it to twenty-six letters, and the Romans took it over from the Greeks. Based on the Greek alphabet (with the exception of a few remaining pictorial systems) with national variations, differences and elaborations, it became the currency of writing of nearly the whole world. In the course of this process it developed in Greece (long before classical times, of course) from writing from the right to the left to a writing system from the left to the right. Later the writing of capital and small letters developed. The numerical system was divided from the alphabet; and with the invention of printing, handwriting and mechanical printing became different. Today, in Europe, and the countries colonized by Europeans, there are five distinctly different alphabets all derived from the Greek and Latin alphabets: the Cyrillic in the Slavic states, in which the Orthodox Church was the main Church; the Greek alphabet in Greece; the Gothic alphabet in Germany; the Gaelic in Ireland; and the Latin in the rest of Central and Western Europe and the countries colonized by Europeans.

    But copy-book writing in the different European and American countries is not identical. It differs in almost every country according to national characteristics and traditions, and it differs in the same country at different times, according to the different spirit of the times (Zeitgeist).

    There is at the moment no unified type of copy-book writing in this country, but rather two distinct styles: block-letter printing and cursive, for which latter some copy-books edited by Mary Richardson in the early years of this century are used in schools. There exists, though a bit out-of-date, a good book of information about the different copy-book styles by F. Victor, published in Berlin before the recent war and called The Copy-book Forms of Fifteen Nations.

    For the graphologist the knowledge of the exact copy-book system under which the writer learnt to write is of great importance. If in doubt, he should not hesitate to inquire, as graphology is based on observing deflections from the national style and is likely to be a failure if it is applied without a knowledge of the standard patterns. Saudek, the first great graphologist from the Continent, who worked and died in this country, felt very strongly about it, and made the characteristics of national writing a matter of special study. He contended that graphology, as learned in one country, can only be applied in another country if the principles are adjusted to the national form of writing and to the national characteristics of the respective country.

    Not only do the national copy-book forms differ, but the writing of each individual differs to a greater or lesser degree. It differs not only from

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