We asked a handwriting analyst to look at the signatures of some big-name technology executives and tell us what they say about their personalities.
Sheila Lowe, president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, provided a blurb for us on Jeff Bezos, Steve Ballmer, and many more.
In researching this story, another handwriting analyst said Lowe is "great" at analysis. Lowe's group, the AHAF, is trying to get cursive back in school curricula.
Lowe cautioned that it's difficult to truly read a person's character based just on their signature. You need some handwriting samples.
"A signature by itself gives only a limited amount of information (it’s like looking at a photo of someone’s nose and trying to describe their whole face)," Lowe told us over email. "The signature is like the cover on a book, and doesn’t always jibe with what’s inside. It’s what the person wants you to know about them."
Since these people are in tech, we're guessing it's been years since any of them hand-wrote notes. As a result we have to use signatures we've found through various online sources.
With Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, what you see is what you get
Lowe: "Bill Gates takes the time to write a clear, clean, unpretentious signature that says, 'What you see is what you get.' There are signs of quick thinking, but the round dot over the 'i' says he’s patient with details. He’s willing to take the time to listen."
Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and CEO of Square's, "@" signature is about saying "who I am is what I do"
Jack Dorsey has two signatures we've seen online. This one plays on his Twitter founding.
Lowe's take on this: "Jack Dorsey’s extremely simplified signature drops his last name and with the @ symbol, identifies him with what he does ('who I am is what I do'). The k ends with a downward trail. If that’s how he normally signs, it may signify a desire to continually look back at the past and figure out how to benefit from his experiences, or to figure out how he got where he is now."
Jack Dorsey's more formal signature shows he's a bottom line kind of guy
Here's another Dorsey signature we found that's more formal. Says Lowe, "This is more his public persona. This one is a logo-type signature, which happens to be easy to forge in its lack of complexity. It’s another case of illegibility that allows the writer to hide anything he doesn’t want the world to see. He’s a bottom line kind of guy, impatient and with that strong ending stroke, aggressive."
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