I was meandering around the internet during the holiday weekend, catching up on RSS feeds and the like, and found this comic by David Coverly:


It reminded me of something from a few weeks ago - I was nosing around in a box of decades-old memorabilia while visiting with my grandparents, and saw what I thought was a note written by my mom. Given that it was a rather racy collection of items from their weekends away from their 10 children,¹ I asked Mom about it, and it turned out to be a note written by my grandpa - their writing is nearly identical. My writing is nearly identical to my dad's as well, which is even more interesting because he's left-handed and I am right-handed. I suppose you could argue that you learn fine motor skills from your parents and thus your handwriting could be similar, but my brother and sister's writing looks nothing like mine nor like my parents'.² Curiouser and curiouser. There doesn't seem to be a lot of research on the genetics of handwriting in a strictly genetic pedigree sense, but I'm curious if there's a link.³

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¹ This led to the need for several glasses of wine. Who knew these old people talked like my friends and I do?? You can't unsee this stuff.
² I am right-handed in writing and hockey, but mix-handed in other areas, like baseball and pickleball. There's not a strong genetic link for left-handedness either, so I don't know where that comes from.
³ I'm sure the genetic basis of handwriting will be high on the NIH's list of necessary research in the coming year.