A Study On The English Handwriting Characteristics

With the deepening of social association between China and the world, English, as a popular language used everywhere, has gained much popularity in our country. The vigorous development on this land has already attracted all professions around the world. And with the increasingly amount of social activities and cooperation in all areas, such as finance, economy and commercial affairs, English contracts, letters and signatures are quite common-seen in daily work. The growing need for English handwriting brings about more civil disputes among several cosmopolitan cities, and this tendency shows that it is high time for the practitioners to go deep into the area of English handwriting examination.Currently, the research in handwriting examinations is comparatively comprehensive in the area of the document examination, researchers and scholars of domestic and abroad has completed a systematic research on the English handwriting. However, the research on the English handwriting examination is anything but penetrative. Here in China, characteristics in English handwriting is not only a key word in theory but also a main examination target in practical work.Hence, the author take the geographical advantage and choose those Han people who living in Shanghai as the study object. After analyzing the characteristics in their English handwriting, the author tries all the ways to find out the ones that own typical Chinese character and summarize them. The unceasingly penetration on the research of English handwriting characteristics can both help the enrichment of research on the English handwriting examination in theory and find the solutions to the examination of disguised handwriting by domestic or foreign writers in practice.This thesis is divided into four chapters. First starting from the theoretical basis on English handwriting characteristics, and analyzing in both respective and comparative ways. The sample materials collected during forensic science practice and experiments offer service to the detailed study on the characteristic of English handwriting written by Han people living in Shanghai, and also analyzing the factors that may have impact on them. After that are two experiments on disguised handwriting examination trying to put out an empirical analysis.Chapter one studies on the theoretical basis of English handwriting characteristics, including the definition and classification, comparing the way of classification between domestic book and the foreign one and illustrating its content. The developing of all experiments in this thesis should be based on the scientific theories of English handwriting characteristics. The author builds the analytical foundation and scientific framework of this thesis by collecting currently relative research results in documentation and literature from domestic and abroad.Chapter two focuses on the English handwriting characteristics. The author carefully watches and analyzes all the English handwriting written by Han people living in Shanghai, classifying these characteristics in two ways. The first way follows a traditional and widely-used style in our country, dividing them into general characteristics and individual characteristics and trying to find those Chinglish ones, making detailed explanation on them.The second way divides English letters by capital and small, and making further division in accordance with the shape of the letters themselves, giving some of who more consideration.Chapter three concludes the factors that may influence the change of English handwriting characteristics. The author outlines three main factors by comparing domestic and foreign ways of writing and habits, including the differences in styles of calligraphy, English writing rules and individual writing background. The author gives detail analysis and examples to prove these three factors respectively. The analysis of studying and working environment and psychological difference when writing foreign language are shown in this chapter.Chapter four shows the empirical application of English handwriting characteristics in the experiments of imitated handwriting. This chapter includes two kinds of experiments: people living in Shanghai imitating the English handwriting by those who live in North America and people living in North America imitating the English handwriting by those who live in Shanghai. The author practically applies the English handwriting characteristics into the examination and analysis of these handwriting samples and makes final judgment and conclusion.After that is some problems and unfavorable factors facing the author during experiments, and plans for improvements are also given here, expecting a more comprehensive study in the near future.Conclusion generalizes the overall of this thesis in this part. The author simplifies her analysis on what she has found in English handwriting characteristics, and also sets out several influencing factor hidden under the differences of English handwriting characteristic between Chinese people and people from English-spoken countries. Finally, on the basis of summarizing the whole work, the author points out what handwriting examination practitioners and researchers should notice, improve and perfect in further experiments and studies.