Disputed Handwriting

cing Usually Presents a Close Resemblance to the Genuine-Traced Forgeries Not Exact Duplicates of Their Originals-The Danger of an Exact Duplication-Forgers Usually Unable to Exactly Reproduce Tracing

o Compare Imitated and Traced Writing-Furrows Traced by Pen Nibs-Tracing Made by an Untrained Hand-Tracing with Pen and Ink Over a Transparency-Internal Evidence of Forgery by Tracing-Forge

f the most common and most

e aid of tracing, the other by free-hand writing. These methods di

upon a transparency over a strong light, and then superimposing the paper upon which the forgery is to be made. The outline of the writing underneath will then appear sufficiently plai

is then penciled or blackened upon the obverse side. When it is placed upon the paper on which the forgery is made, the lines upon the tracing are retra

ements, so that the hand no longer glides naturally and automatically over the paper, but moves slowly with a halting, vacillating motion, as the eye passes to and from the copy to the pen, moving under the specific control of the will. Evidence of such a forgery is manifest in the formal, broken, nervous lines, the uneven flow of the ink,

ens that the original writing from which the tracings were made is discovered, in which case the closely duplicated forms will be positive evidence of forgery. The degree to which o

by persons having any knowledge of forgery, and is therefore avoided. Another difficulty is that the very delicate features of the original writing are more or less obscured by the opaqueness of two sheets of paper, and are therefore changed or omitted from the forged simulation, and their absence is usually supplied, through force of habit, by equally delicate unconscious characteristics from the writing of the forger. Again, the forg

e or less torn out, so as to lie loose upon the surface. Also the ink will be more or less ground off from the paper, thus giving the lines a gray and lifeless appearance. And as retouchings are usually made after the guide-lines have been removed, the ink, wherever they occur, will have

ting, to be copied until it has been to a greater or less degree idealized, the hand must be trained to

the writing his own unconscious habit and to fail to reproduce with sufficient accuracy that of the original writing, so that when subjected to rigid analysis and microscopic inspection, the spuriousness is made manifest and demonstrable. Specific attention shou

uestion and the exemplars placed side by side for comparis

e methods, employed by skilled and experienced examiners, will rarely fail of establishing the true relationship between

writing than the space between them, because they fill with ink, which afterwards dries and produces a thicker layer of black sediment than those elsewhere. The variations of pressure upon the pen can be easily noticed by the alternate wi

a transparency, as is often done, no rubbing is necessary

ing to be copied until it has been to a greater or less degree idealized, the hand must be trained to its

ting his own unconscious habit, and to fail to reproduce with sufficient accuracy that of the original writing, so that when subjected to rigid analysis and microscopic inspection, the spuriousness is made manifest and demonstrable. Specific attenti

ion and the exemplars placed side by side for comparison will

th a free hand, sketches in pencil the characters he intends to make in ink on the document, or traces them by means of blackened

nt absence of all constraint, and a careful examination of the result revealed no pause of the pen. But, on the other hand, these freely written tracings have invariably shown either a deviation from some habitual prac

he tends to evolve symmetrical designs, as in the highest and simplest forms of ancient architecture. When the parts of the design are prescribed, as in the representation of objects in nature, he soon tires of mere mechanical repetition of the same things in a given sequence, and strives to convey some ulterior i