The trail you leave in ink

Reading you by how you write

If Willy Loman was alive today and selling products on the Internet, Ruth Holmes would read his handwriting and suggest a different path career that wouldn't cause him to commit suicide.

The Bloomfield Hills handwriting analyst studies the trail people leave in ink and shows how to enrich their life experience or identifies their role in a crime.

Loman, the protagonist of Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Death of a Salesman,” represented the broken, defeated professional who couldn't make enough income to feed his family. He — like so many Americans caught in economic turbulence — might overlook his true genius. Holmes, the president of Pentec Inc., said she could identify his niche by observing a dot of an “i,” a fancy twist starting or finishing a word, or the slope and direction of the letters in his signature.

“I look for the undaunted spirit, the source of good self-esteem; it is there in almost everyone,” said Holmes.

Vendors exhibiting at national conventions often hire her and her Boston-based daughter, Sarah Holmes Tucker, to read more than 300 different handwriting samples and share findings in five- or 10-minute sessions.

In this turbulent economy, an esoteric skill such as handwriting analysis continues to serve as a gainful career. Holmes was named in 2002 as one of Michigan's 95 Most Powerful Women by Corp! Magazine and often appears on CBS News, Discovery, CNBC, BBC, “Canada AM,” truTV and “Dateline.”

Holmes Tucker has a master of arts in psychology and is court qualified as an expert witness and document examiner. Pentec brings in $150,000 in annual sales.

Holmes, working out of her home, maintains clients in the U.S., Mexico, Canada and France. She helped lawyers with the jury selection for pathologist Jack Kevorkian and recently worked with HBO for the upcoming film, “You Don't Know Jack,” about the man who served a jail sentence for assisting suicides.

“Ruth draws long lines whenever she works a conference. I'd say she can nail a personality with a signature better than most people in her field,” said Greg O'Neil, publisher of the Michigan Banker Magazine in Lansing. His publication wrote about Holmes when she worked at the Comerica Bank booth at the statewide banker's convention in 2008.

Can anyone learn to probe handwriting?

“The skill is both a science and an art. The data gathered from graphology do form predictable patterns. How you interpret the information is both studied and intuitive,” Holmes said. Lawbreakers beware.

Holmes helped a major airline identify a disgruntled worker who sprayed menacing graffiti in the cargo hold of a plane by analyzing handwriting samples of all maintenance employees.

“Every company should keep a sample of their employees' handwriting, should the need arise,” she said.

According to her research the hand responds to what the brain asks it to do. Each person has a signature that may change with self-confidence, income or intent.

The newest stream of income is corporate realignment. Companies that shrunk from 200 to 70 employees periodically analyze how to build satisfaction among the survivors. A software developer might be miscast as a factory floor supervisor while a secretary could have the innate skill of a super salesperson.

“I never tell a company whom to hire or promote,” Holmes cautions. “I share with the supervisor the applicant's aptitudes talents and tendencies that reflect upon the position considered — whether you want someone thorough, methodical and detail-oriented or imaginative, outgoing and persistent.”

“We are looking for people with a born aptitude for particular jobs. We encourage people born with certain aptitudes to cultivate their talents into employable skills,” Holmes said.

As business picks up and her services consume from 12 to 16 hours a day, she looks to help companies place their existing people into tasks they enjoy, or helping trade show participants identify the craft that will help them make a satisfactory income.

“No one is ever stuck anywhere, as long as they recognize new or innate talents,” Holmes said.

She engaged 15 participants at a recent satellite meeting of the National Association of Women Business Owners of Greater Detroit.

Charlon Hibbard, a Mary Kay sales rep, invited Holmes to the group because people are fascinated with themselves and how they are seen.

Holmes can tell the difference between mens' and womens' writing. Women write with more expressiveness, whereas mens' writing tends to be more factual and reflective. Extroverts write with a forward movement, original connections between letters and moderate to large script. On the other hand, introverts wrote smaller and more precisely.

The stage shows help Holmes gain visibility, but her forensic work is legendary. Since 1979 she's worked with police departments, private investigators, attorneys and others to analyze documents such as wills and trusts. She can verify suicide notes or find a scam signature on a pricey guitar.

“Every case is unique and based on the questioned document and the type of exemplars needed for comparison,” Holmes said.