A genuine signature is a habit. It is written quickly, without thought, by a hand that has made the same movements thousands of times. A forger has to do the opposite: copy the shape of someone else’s habit while concentrating on every stroke. That conflict leaves traces, and those traces are what a document examiner looks for.
How signatures are forged
- Simulation — the forger copies a genuine signature freehand, by eye.
- Tracing — a genuine signature is traced, over a light source or by first pressing an outline into the paper and inking over it.
- Disguise — a person deliberately signs differently, intending to deny the signature later.
- Transplanting — a genuine signature is cut, scanned or photocopied onto another document. This is why such disputes so often arise over photocopies.
Signs that point to forgery
- Poor line quality — tremor, wavering or a “drawn” look where a genuine writer’s strokes are smooth and fast.
- Blunt beginnings and endings — a fluent writer’s strokes start and finish in motion, often with fine tapering; a slow copy starts and stops abruptly.
- Unnatural pen lifts — breaks in places where the genuine writer never lifts the pen.
- Retouching and patching — strokes gone over a second time to correct their shape.
- Even, heavy pressure — a genuine signature varies in pressure with speed; a careful copy is often uniformly pressed.
- Guide lines and indentations — pencil or carbon lines, or an indented outline, left by tracing.
- Too perfect a match — nobody signs exactly the same way twice. Two signatures that coincide when one is laid over the other suggest that one was traced from the other.
Differences are not always forgery
Genuine signatures vary — with age, illness, haste, posture, the pen and the surface. An examiner compares the disputed signature with a range of admitted ones and asks whether the differences fall within the writer’s natural variation, or are of a kind the writer does not make. A single difference in shape, on its own, proves little.
What you can do
- Do not try to judge from a photocopy or a phone photograph. Tracing, pen pressure and retouching are often visible only on the original.
- Keep the original safe: do not staple, fold, mark or laminate it.
- Collect admitted signatures from around the date of the disputed one — bank records, cheques, earlier deeds, letters. See Documents & Specimens Required.
- Seek an opinion early, before the evidence stage of a case.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Each opinion depends on the documents examined.