Root of the Week: GRAPH (Wednesday)

Grapheme, Calligraphy (Noun)

The word grapheme combines graph with the suffix “eme, which means “unit of language.”  A grapheme is a unit of writing, such as a letter or character.  Calligraphy combines the Greek kallos (beauty) with graph, and refers to beautiful handwriting.  A skilled calligrapher can make each grapheme graceful and consistent, creating a piece of text that is elegant and harmonious.

Graphology (Noun)

Practitioners of the pseudoscience called graphology (graph + “ology,” meaning “science of”) claim to be able to identify aspects of a person’s personality by analyzing the person’s handwriting.  Graphology is not the same thing as forensic handwriting analysis, which is used for purposes such as detecting forgery, a more modest and empirically demonstrable goal.  Graphologists make some pretty outlandish claims.  Examples include the contention that a person who dots the letter “i” high above the stem is more “visionary” than a person whose dot is closer to the stem because “the top of the page represents dreams.”  Um … sure.  Graphology has been debunked in various ways.  In one experiment, different graphologists analyzed the same handwriting sample and came to wildly various conclusions about the writer.