True handwriting analysis involves careful examination of the design, shape and structure of handwriting to determine who wrote it. The basic principle of handwriting analysis is that no two people write something exactly the same way.

Handwriting analysis looks at letter formations, connecting strokes between the letters, upstrokes, retraces, downstrokes, spacing, baseline, curves, size, distortions, hesitations and a number of other characteristics of handwriting. By examining these details and variations in a possible piece of evidence and comparing them to a sample of known authorship, forensic scientists can say whether or not the samples were written by the same person.

• the forging of bank cheques and withdrawal forms,
• the deliberate alteration of business records and receipts,
• threatening letters and ransom notes,
• suicide notes.

1. Sign your name on a blank piece of paper as you would sign a receipt or some other document.

Have several friends do the same. Swap papers. Take a few minutes and try to forge each other's signatures.

2. Even more difficult, collect some writing samples from a classmate and try to forge a paragraph of their writing. Share the paragraph and the original writing samples. Can anyone tell that the paragraph is a forgery?

Obtaining known writing  Summary of the most essential factors.

This document hangs on the wall of a police handwriting office. It is very well worn and lists the Dos and Don'ts of obtaining a known handwriting specimen. It's worth examining!

Compare handwriting samples  Examine a chart.

This document is a part of a handwriting comparison chart produced for display in court. The left side of the photo contains cut-out letters from a forged document. The right hand side shows matching elements taken from a letter known to have been written by the suspect.

Take careful note of the small numbers which indicate the matching elements.

Forgery

It is actually possible to commit a crime by forging your own signature!

Forgery is the creation of falsified material or the altering of any writing with the purpose of defrauding or cheating. There are four basic types of forgery: traced, simulation, freehand and lifted.

Tracing
There are a few different ways to do traced forgeries: with overlays (as with tracing paper), transmitted light (as with a light board), tracing the indentations left in the page underneath the original writing and tracing patterns of dots that outline the writing to be forged.

Simulation
Simulation involves the copying of writing from a genuine article, trying to imitate the handwriting of the original.

Freehand
Freehand forgeries are written with no knowledge of the appearance of the original, just writing off the top of your head and passing it off as something else.

Lifted forgery
The final type of forgery is a lifted forgery, in which sticky-tape is used to lift a signature from one document and place it on another.

Freehand forgeries are the easiest to detect. Simulation forgeries are also easy to detect for a number of reasons:

• It is very difficult to copy someone else's handwriting.
• The style will not be as fluid because the writing does not come naturally.
• The forged writing will show tremors, hesitations and other variations in letter quality that 'comfortable' handwriting would not have.

Traced forgeries and lifts are easy enough to detect but the identity of the forger cannot be easily determined.

©The Crown in Right of Tasmania

The Department of Education would like to thank Tasmania Police, and in particular Tasmania Police Forensic Services, for their assistance in the making of these materials.Conditions of use (This item contains non-TLF content.)