A Study on the Influence of Light Social Drinking on Writing by Chinese in Hong Kong

A study was conducted on the effect of light social drinking on handwriting involving the writing of Chinese, English, Arabic numerals, and some geometric shapes. All of the 151 participants were ethnically Hong Kong Chinese and ranged from occasional drinkers to habitual drinkers of alcoholic beverages. The results of this study confirmed observations made in previous studies of the effects on handwriting due to alcohol consumption. In general, the forensic document examiner can expect to find the effects to include an increase in size of the writing, wider word spacing, and increased pen pressure along with possible writing mistakes. The other aspects of handwriting such as the quality of writing, writing characteristics including writing movements, alignment, and slant would largely be retained. The writing of geometric shapes after light drinking agreed with that of text writing with some exceptions.