1913-14.] Analytical Study of the Mechanism of Writing. 239 
traces of this in writing ? There are to some extent. In adult writing we 
can often mark off the phrases, at any rate, by the subordination of the 
individual pressures for each word to a single maximum pressure on some 
part, usually the end, of the phrase. While the child is drawing and not 
writing we naturally look in vain for any such characteristic. It must 
be noted, however, that the writing of clerks, whom we may consider 
professional writers, tends to lose this last language mark and tends to 
show an approximately uniform pressure. 
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1 
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n 
-jx 
m 
HZ 
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Fig. 6. 
I. “ Masculine ” type. 
II. “ Feminine ” type. 
III. “Mechanical ” or “ Clerical” type. 
IV. Right-hand writing, and 
V. Left-hand writing without practice by 
same subject. 
Previous workers have sought to distinguish, on the basis of point 
pressure traces, different types of writing and writers (fig. 6). As an 
introduction to any such attempt, it must be stated emphatically that the 
point pressure trace is as characteristic of an individual as] his hand of 
writing or his signature, and even in left-handed writing, without practice 
with the left hand, individual characteristics reveal themselves in the 
pressure trace. Nevertheless, it does seem as if there were distinct types of 
writer. Two adult types have been generally distinguished by previous 
investigators. The one tends to show a single maximum of pressure for 
each word or phrase written as a whole, and tends to increase writing 
pressure with increased speed of writing ; the other tends to show several 
