What basic characteristics would a document examiner look at to determine if there is a match between two samples?

Principles of Forensic Document Examination

Forensic document examiners often deal with questions of document authenticity. To determine whether a document is genuine, an examiner may attempt to confirm who created the document, determine the timeframe in which it was created, identify the materials used in its preparation or uncover modifications to the original text.

Documents can be examined for evidence of alterations, obliterations, erasures and page substitutions. Or the examiner can study the methods, materials or machines that created the document, providing key information that can identify or narrow the possible sources of the document. The ink, paper, writing tools, ribbons, stamps and seals used in production of the document may all reveal important clues. The examiner may even discover valuable evidence in a document’s invisible impressions.

A key element of document examination focuses on handwriting. Forensic examination and comparison of handwriting, which includes hand printing and signatures, is based on three main principles: (1) Given a sufficient amount of handwriting, no two skilled writers exhibit identical handwriting features; (2) every person has a range of natural variation to his or her writing; (3) no writer can exceed his or her skill level (i.e., it would not be possible for a marginally literate person who has only learned to produce very basic hand-printed letters to execute perfectly formed, highly skilled cursive writing).

Computer databases maintained by the U.S. Secret Service, German Federal Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation contain handwriting samples from hundreds of thousands of writers. Comparisons of these databases have not identified two individuals who have the exact same combination of handwriting characteristics, adding to the authenticity of handwriting as a solid form of evidence.

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What basic characteristics would a document examiner look at to determine a match between two samples of paper?

as well as three characteristics of writing not related to handwriting, that an examiner compares when studying a questioned document.,Handwriting characteristics an examiner looks for include angularity, slope, speed, pressure, letter and word spacing, relative dimensions of letters, connections, pen movement, writing ...

What are some characteristics that one should look at when comparing known and questioned documents?

Comparisons of writing samples take into consideration a wide variety of handwriting characteristics including word and letter spacing, slant or slope, speed, pen position, use of capitalization, embellishments, legibility, use of punctuation, and proportion of letters and other attributes.

What handwriting characteristics can be used for comparison of Questioned Documents?

There are many characteristics of handwriting that can be compared besides letter forms and connecting strokes. Document examiners compare line quality, pressure patterns, size and proportions, spacing, slant, baseline, and utilization of space.

What does a document examiner look for?

Documents can be examined for evidence of alterations, obliterations, erasures and page substitutions. Or the examiner can study the methods, materials or machines that created the document, providing key information that can identify or narrow the possible sources of the document.