Handwriting samples containing 98 common characters were obtained by dictation from the volunteers who also completed a questionnaire giving basic demographic data. The paper explores the influence of writing movements, writing habits, and character structures, as well as relationships between important features of Chinese and Latinized language systems. While the two systems are significantly different, the finding that both slant in English writing and tilt in Chinese writing increase as the writing speed increases may suggest that all human writing shares some important properties. The study revealed that measurable parameters of different characters written by the same person are functions of character structure and writing habits, the interaction of which generates an 'internal variability.' This property of handwriting can be used as a method of authorship identification. Provided a reasonable number of characters are available for examination, a computer-aided curve fitting technique can be used for comparing certain measurable parameters. 7 tables, 10 figures, and 5 references. (Publisher abstract modified)