Handwriting Features Guide: A reference list of defined and illustrated features used by forensic handwriting examiners

By Nicole Crown, Raymond Marquis and Carolyne Bird

Forensic handwriting examination follows a process comprised of four main steps: Analysis, Comparison, Evaluation, and Verification (ACE-V). While the process itself has been described and refined, very little effort has been undertaken to establish a clear and detailed list of features that the forensic handwriting examiner (FHE) must analyse in the first step of the examination. In-depth analysis of graphical features of handwritten texts or signatures is integral to the work of FHEs when requested to give an expert opinion, typically to determine whether a questioned handwritten item has been written by a specific writer. Indeed, it is these graphical features that will be compared between questioned and known samples, to establish similarities and differences that will finally be evaluated under two or more mutually exclusive propositions to reach a conclusion. A robust analysis based on clearly defined features is necessary to provide reliable and unbiased opinions.
Numerous books and articles describe handwriting features that should be observed during the analysis stage of the examination. However, the descriptions can be vague, and several authors may use different terms to describe the same feature. It may also happen that the same term is used to define different characteristics. Moreover, illustrations of terms are often scarce and some- times of little help to understand what the corresponding features are. These problems are exacerbated when trying to equate terms in different languages.
This project presents a comprehensive depiction of writing fea- tures (particularly found in Latin script) relating to the whole hand- written text or signature, which the authors consider relevant to help answer questions commonly ad- dressed by FHEs.
It is the authors hope that the FHE community utilises this illustrated list of writing features, which we believe can promote a thorough and complete analysis and provide a common language for FHEs. Thus, this project seeks to contribute to establishing a systematic and standardized approach to forensic handwriting examination and move the discipline towards reproducibility and validation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BoD - Books on Demand
• Release date: Jun 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9783758334672

Nicole Crown

Zurich Forensic Science Institute, Switzerland Nicole Crown has obtained a MSc in forensic sciences from the University of Lausanne in 2001, Switzerland. She has 18 years of experience in the field of forensic handwriting examination, two of those in the Questioned Document Unit, Western Cape, South Africa. She has been working since 2010 as a senior handwriting examiner at the Zurich Forensic Science Institute for civil and penal cases. Nicole has been a member of the Steering Committee of the European Network of Forensic Handwriting Experts (ENFHEX) since 2015 in various roles, with current responsibility in the areas of education and training.

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The overall pictorial appearance [4] of a handwritten text or a signature refers to the general impression that it gives. Style, complexity, consistency, legibility, writing movement and embellishments (or simplification) play a significant role in the overall pictorial appearance. These features will be seen hereafter in turn.

HANDWRITING STYLE

Definition: Handwriting style [handwriting design] is defined according to degree of connectedness (see Chapter 6, Connectedness) and class of allographs used [5].

With respect with connectedness, handwriting style can be classified in three categories, illustrated on Figure 1.1:

Cursive (letters are mainly connected)

Print [script] (letters are mainly disconnected and often similar in design to printing characters)

Semi-cursive [mixed, composite] (some letters are connected, and some are disconnected).

Handwriting style is further characterized by the class of allographs used, which can be (see Fig. 1.2):

Lower case [small, minuscules]

Upper case [capitals, majuscules]

Mixed case.

Block lettering [handlettering, hand-printing] is a style of handwriting using disconnected uppercase letters (see Fig. 1.2b).

1.1a Cursive

1.1a Cursive

1.1b Print

1.1c Semi-cursive

■ Figure 1.1: Different handwriting styles (connectedness).

1.2a Lower case

1.2b Upper case

1.2c Mixed case

■ Figure 1.2: Different handwriting styles (class of allographs).

SIGNATURE STYLE

Definition: Signature style is defined according to legibility of the signature.

Signature style can be categorized as stylized (one or no allograph is legible), mixed (at least two allographs are legible) or text-based (all allographs are legible) [4] (Figure 1.3).

Signature style must be distinguished from signature type, which corresponds to the type of signature chosen by a given writer to fit a given purpose, whether it is formal or informal or whether the writer needs to affix a full signature or a short form (for example on the first pages of a contract) (Figure 1.4).

1.3a Text-based

1.3a Text-based

1.3b Mixed

1.3c Stylized

■ Figure 1.3: Different signature styles (from different writers).

1.4a Full signature

1.4b Short signature

1.4c Initials

■ Figure 1.4: Different signature types of a same writer.

COMPLEXITY

Definition: Handwriting complexity [uniqueness] is related to its degree of departure from copybook models. This might be due to conscious or subconscious changes in the writing features during maturation of the learning process, according to personal taste, skill, and convenience. This impacts the frequency of its features within a population of writers: A complex handwriting shows unusual features within the relevant population, while simplistic handwriting shows features that are commonly found between writers, i.e., that will only poorly discriminate between writers. Handwriting complexity also refers to the ease of simulating it (which depends on other features, such as style, connectedness, line quality and writing pressure, as well as factors such as simulator’s skill for the task and the similarities of the target writing to the simulator’s writing).

A piece of handwritten text might be qualified as simplistic (if it follows a copybook model), or moderately or highly complex (Figure 1.5). In the same way, complexity of a signature may be qualified as low, medium, or high (Figure 1.6). Signature complexity can also be assessed through measurement [6], based on the number of turning points and intersections.

1.5a Low complexity

1.5a Low complexity

1.5b Medium complexity

1.5c High complexity

■ Figure 1.5: Different degrees of handwriting complexity.

1.6a Low complexity

1.6b Medium complexity

1.6c High complexity

■ Figure 1.6: Different degrees of signature complexity.

CONSISTENCY

Definition: Consistency [uniformity] [7] refers to the extent of variation of features of a handwritten text. This variation can be natural (i.e., due to the inherent nature of any perceptual-motor human task that varies in its response from one occasion to the next, as well as to other factors such as health condition, writing surface, etc.), or unnatural (i.e., due to alterations resulting from unnatural writing processes [5] such as simulation and disguise). Consistency can be an attribute of any single feature of a handwritten text such as size or slant (see Chapters 2 and 3, Slant and Size), but it can also be used to describe the appearance of a handwritten text as a