Can the personality trait of "Patience" be determined using someone's handwriting ?

What is Patience ?

Dictionary.com defines patience as "an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay".

Wikipedia defines Patience as- "Patience is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties."
Image Source: http://ninarose.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/got-patience-680x5101.jpg

Characteristics of an Individual showing Patience:
So, If we have to look at the trait of Patience more holistically it constitutes of the following parts-
- Any person with Patience may tend to have more of Attention to details. i.e. Patient person will make enough efforts to care for the details. Impatient person is more likely to miss on the details.
- Patient person will not show Impulsiveness in his behavior in the common day-to-day situations. He will largely be more calm than the person who makes decisions by impulse
- Patient person will be more persistent in his efforts. Quoting the wikipedia definition, Impatient person will likely give up when faced with some serious difficulties.
- Patient person will have less of temper in his personality, atleast he wont be too vocal (in negative sense) about it.

Can handwriting reveal "Patience" ?
There is no one single trait in handwriting analysis that determines patience in an individual. It always helps to break down the trait into different characteristics that define a particular trait- in this case "Patience".
If we look at the different identified characteristics in the previous section, it primarily talks about 4 different traits-

1. Attention to details
2. Lack of Impulsiveness
3. Persistence
4. Lack of temper

Now, the question becomes- Can handwriting reveal the above four traits ? The answer is an "Yes", it very well can.

1. Attention to details is usually revealed by looking at "i" or "j" dots. If the dot is closer to the stem and is formed using a well formed dot (i.e. no slashes etc.).
2. One indicator of Impulsiveness in handwriting is the slant of the handwriting. Usually the extreme right slant in the handwriting indicates a person very much under the influence of emotions and generally impulsive. A person with rather straight slant or moderately right side slant generally is not as impulsive.
3. Persistence in handwriting is revealed by the strokes that end up to the right after completing a star like formation.
4. Temper is usually revealed by the stroke in handwriting that has to do with placement of "i","j" dots and "t" horizontal bar. If the "i", "j" dots are more skewed towards the right rather than on the top of these letters or if "t" horizontal bar is towards the right, it indicates the presence of temper in the handwriting.

So, if i check the handwriting and find a person having all these 4 traits- that means i am dealing with a Patient person ?
Yes and No.
Yes because the presence of these 4 traits to a large extent sum up that a person has patience in his personality.
No because drawing conclusions about Personality trait from one's handwriting is not-so straightforward. The reason is that to make conclusions the handwriting should be looked at more holistically and after careful study of dependent traits e.g. in the above break-up if a person has left hand slant (more Introvert tendencies) and has a temper stroke in handwriting, he may not always be too expressive. It may give an impression that a person is patient but he may not be so deep down.
Similarly, the meaning of analysis may change if we take pressure into consideration.
Also, the meaning might change if we are looking at Signature of a person and the general handwritten note. Having these traits in Signature but not in actual handwriting would mean that the person tend to be patient in public life but in real life he may not be so.

So, the overall analysis of personality may not be as simplistic as knowing a single trait but the above certainly would give pointers to what to look for when determining patience through an individual's handwriting.

Note:
1. The origin of this post is attributed to one of the questions posted in Graphology community in Orkut.
2. I will work to put the pictorial view of the strokes explained in section- "Can handwriting reveal "Patience" ?" in some time.