A statistical study of the relative difficulty of freehand simulation of form, proportion, and line quality in Arabic signatures

This article compares the skill with which a large sample of Arabic writers was able to simulate different handwriting elements in two Arabic signatures. The data agree with the consensus of experts about Roman script: Form is significantly better simulated than Proportion, and Proportion is significantly better simulated than Line Quality. The fact that patterns long observed in Roman script simulation can be statistically demonstrated to exist in the simulation of Arabic signatures suggests that these may be widespread, if not universal, patterns of simulation among writing systems. This is also supported by similar results from a study of abstract characters (Leung et al. 1993), which suggests that these tendencies may even transcend linguistic writing systems. Among the Proportional elements are slant, alignment, spacing, and size.