From dotted points made above the genuine signature straight lines are drawn radiating from it to certain portions of certain letters in the signature that is forged.  When the forged signature is replaced in the glass and the other on top, as is done in the tracing, these radiating lines will fall one upon the other with the exactness of the lines in the signatures.

These radiating lines, too, may be used in the few cases where the forger is an expert penman depending upon an offhand duplication of a signature.  This penman will have his inevitable natural slant to his letters.  This characteristic slant never is the same in two individuals.  In his free and easy forgery of a name written by another person this “Jim, the penman” exposes his acquired slant which disputes the original.

This slant of individual writing shows especially in any attempt to write a forged letter or document.  When the pen scope of the original has been lined out, proving the characteristic common lengths between the lifting of the pen from the paper, the lines radiating from the points to individual letters in words or groups of words in authentic and bogus specimens, these radiations point at once to the fact that the same person did not write the matter.

These are some of the things upon which the handwriting expert works upon and brings to bear in proof of reproduced signatures and handwriting in general.  How the more or less inexpert person discovers questionable showing in these duplications are many.  His intuitions may suggest his doubts.  Material evidences may have come to bear upon him.  Likelihood of some one person’s having self-interests in the matter may induce him to make sure.

In the case of a banker or business man, having large interests and required to affix his signature to many papers of moment, he ordinarily makes it certain that through adapted whorls and freehand sweeps of the pen, the signature will be least careless and inviting to the adventurous forger.  In much of his personal correspondence with strangers, however, this adapted and unusual signature frequently becomes a source of loss to himself and irritation to his correspondents.  In the case of hundreds of such individuals, the writing to a stranger in expectation of a reply becomes an absurdity for the reason that the person addressed is hopelessly barred from reading the name attached to the letter.  A plain signature is always the best.

CHAPTER IV

ERASURES, ALTERATIONS AND ADDITIONS

What Erasure Means—­The English Law—­What a Fraudulent Alteration Means—­Altered or Erased Parts Considered—­Memoranda of Alterations Should Always Accompany Paper Changed—­How Added Words Should be Treated—­How to Erase Words and Lines Without Creating Suspicion—­Writing Over an Erasure—­How to Determine Whether or Not Erasures or Alterations Have Been Made—­Additions