The world's handwriting in ONE font: Typeface reveals how the average person writes each letter of the alphabet
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Handwriting is so unique to an individual, it can be used in court to identify suspects and victims.
But what would happen if you took all the different ways people around the world write the Latin alphabet letters and combined them into a single font?
That was the thinking behind pen maker Bic's latest experiment - but the result is a basic, and somewhat childlike, typeface.
French pen maker BIC analysed 868,496 characters from handwriting from 112 countries to create an average typeface alphabet (pictured). The alphabet can be explored by gender, age, country and handedness
WHAT DOES YOUR HANDWRITING SAY ABOUT YOU?
Recent research from the National Pen Company in the U.S., found that a person's handwriting can give away clues about 5,000 different personality traits.
These traits are revealed based on the way people space their letters, how they sign their name, and even how they connect the letter 'o' and 's' to other letters in a word.
For example, people with small handwriting tend to be shy, studious and meticulous, whereas outgoing people who love attention will have larger handwriting.
If handwriting slants to the right the person is open to new experiences and enjoy meeting new people. If handwriting slants to the left, that person tends to keep themselves to themselves.
Procrastinators tend to dot their 'i's and 'j's to the left of the base letter, while child-like personality types will draw their dots as circles.
To begin analysing the world's handwriting, France-based Bic asked people to contribute their handwriting to the Universal Typeface Experiment site.
The firm used software to plot the shape and motion of each letter, and has analysed a total of 868,496 characters from 113 countries at the time of writing.
This was taken from more than 400,000 samples.
Each of these letters were placed on top of each other to find the typical shape and motion, and these were used to form an average letter - shown on the site in yellow.
The alphabet can be explored by gender, age, country, handedness and industry.
The darker the shading behind a letter, the more uniform it was written across contributors, while the lighter the shading, the more freeform the handwriting.
This shading is also determined by how many people from that country and industry contributed handwriting.
The number of characters used to form the average letter is shown beneath each one.
The darker the shading behind a letter, the more uniform it was written across contributors, while the lighter the shading, the more free-form the handwriting. Left-handed people tend to write letters more narrow than right-handed people
Although the writing style between the UK and U.S, for example, is very similar across the entire alphabet, there are dramatic differences between Angola and American Samoa. In the latter (pictured left) the line through the letter 'F' is wavy, while the style of the Angolan 'F' (pictured right) is more fluid and curved
People in the education industry (pictured left) tend to write their letter 'G's more neatly than service people (pictured centre), while people in the traffic industry (pictured right) write more curved Gs
Although the writing style between the UK and U.S, for example, is very similar across the entire alphabet, there are dramatic differences between Angola and American Samoa.
In the latter, the line through the letter 'F' is wavy, while the style of the Angolan 'F' is more fluid and curved.
Across the board, left-handed people tend to write letters more narrow than right-handed people, and older people tend to leave bigger gaps between the lines of the letters.
Hovering over each letter in the categories reveals the different shapes that contributed to the average letter (pictured left). On the site's homepage, these letters also show the name and location, where available (right)
This image shows that the way different ages write the letter 'R' is similar across the board. However, the darker shading behind the 45 to 59 age group suggests they are more likely to write the letter in the same way. Younger people write the letter taller and thinner than other groups
People in the education industry tend to write their letter 'G's more neatly than service people, while people in the traffic industry have more curved Gs.
Hovering over each letter in the categories reveals the different shapes that contributed to the average letter.
On the site's homepage, these letters also show the name and location, where available.
The company is still looking for contributors at the experiment's website.
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