ABSTRACT
When a person signs his or her name, he or she is carrying out one of the most common writing acts. With time and usage, a signature can become highly individualized, often in a style quite distinct from that of the writer’s other handwriting. The complexity and consistency of an individual’s signature does not reflect his or her education or intelligence. How each person writes depends upon the combined effect of a number of factors. Most marginally educated individuals produce a deliberate, awkward signature, lacking in skill
and freedom, but nonetheless individual to the writer. With more proficient writers, the entire makeup of the signature assumes greater skill, movement becomes less primitive and elementary, and many letter designs approximate, to a greater or lesser degree, the copybook writing that the individual was taught. Just how a person writes his or her name depends upon numerous factors, such as muscular control, coordination, health, age, the frequency at which he or she is called upon to write, writing instrument, etc. Over time, all of these factors are blended into an individual’s signature; a writer is almost never aware of any of these factors. Instead, through repetition, the writer executes an automatic formation of strokes, which usually but not always tends to assume a consistent pattern. Each signature varies to some degree from a master pattern and from other specimens of his or her signature. For the vast majority of individuals, signing one’s name is a habitual act. The act of reproducing this piece of writing called a signature requires a minimum of concentration. Individuals can usually multi-task when signing their signature. The degree of variation among genuine signatures for each individual can range from slight to extreme. This is referred to as a range of variation and is an expected feature.
