The art of deconstructing our signatures

Five years ago, someone asked on Reddit, "Why does everyone have a signature developed except for me?' The post garnered 90 comments. 

One user wrote, "Mine is basically a rushed handwriting of my first initial and last name. Another commented, "I tried making it all nice, but all that is really legible are my initials and some squiggles."

So, how do people choose their signature? Not everyone starts with a big letter or a cursive one. Some signatures are complex while others are just using the initials.   

Md Tajul Islam, a young Dhaka-based journalist, uses initials as his signature and writes the entire thing without taking the pen off the paper. He adds dots at the end. 

"My father was into signatures a lot; he had a nice and unique one. It took my brother years to forge it for school reports. Mine didn't end up being that exclusive but I tried to follow my father's style. 

The only difference is that he used to take the first strike of the pen to the left, and I took it to the right," he said.

Imtiaz Kamal Faruqui, an English lecturer, chose an entangled cursive signature for himself. He said, "I was fascinated by how my parents entangled their entire names into a single, twisted form."  

While Architect Shaily Shagota chose a complex signature that no one would be able to forge, online journalist Rummana Ferdous Fagun wanted something easy and pretty. 

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, had an unconventional signature, with all lowercase, he wrote his name in an ascending angle. Another successful businessman, Larry Page, also one of the co-founders of Google, keeps the first 'a' in his name open at the top, and the first letters are relatively bigger.  

All this information might seem like random bits but psychologists and forensic experts say signatures have a language of their own. 

We reached out to A B M Najmus Sakib, assistant professor at the Department of Criminology of the University of Dhaka, who said, "The concept of signature is that it expresses the authenticity of a person. Long ago, before the alphabet, people used fingerprints to mark something. Because fingerprints are unique, and no one print will match with another. Only forensic experts can distinguish." 
After that when human civilisation came up with handwriting and letters, seals and signatures began gaining popularity as the authenticity mark.

"It is mostly for security purposes. And the psychology behind choosing a signature is, it should be unique in a way so that no one can copy it, which will ensure my security of wealth and identity," he said.

Signatures can define people's psychology

In 1622, Camillo Baldi carried out a systematic and practical observation of handwriting on a sample of depressed people. He published the book titled "Treated how, by a letter missive, one recognises the writer's nature and qualities" – which is considered the first known graphological essay in the world.

"He noticed that depressed people's handwriting tends to touch the baseline, and the letters go downward. There are gaps between the letters and the words, and there is overwriting in their handwriting," said Md Meraz Hossain, a PhD scholar at the National Forensic Sciences University, India, and director of the Bangladesh Institute of Forensic Psychology and Graphology. 

On the other hand, you will find people getting upward on the page while writing. That means they are optimistic about life. 

"In forensic graphology studies, we have to take a standard sample of handwriting and signatures to find patterns. Written on a standard page where a particular letter, let's say 'e', might appear 20 times. 15 e's will be similar, and five can be different. 

We would examine the patterns of the letter," Meraz said. 

He said that handwriting is different from signatures. While general handwriting defines a person's personal life, a signature defines a person's professional life. But the general characteristics resemble. 

For example, the pen pressure, the loops, the t bar or the i dot etc will have similarities in a person's handwriting and signature. For example, talkative or expressive people tend to have open a's and o's. In Larry Page's signature, there is an open a.   

If the loop of the e is bigger and more circular, that means the person is more open-minded, and a good listener. If it is thin and sharp, it means the person is a selective listener. 

When you have a connected signature, it means you have good communication skills. If your signature goes upwards, this means you are very optimistic. Adding a line at the end of your signature shows confidence. 

Signatures with straight and sharp edges mean the person is aggressive while more round shaped softer edges mean the person is soft in nature. 

The signature of Steve Jobs with all lower cases meant he was polite and down to earth. But the striking j shows he was ambitious, perhaps arrogant too. And he was known to treat his employees poorly. 

Dot is another important aspect of a signature. Even-numbered dots in a signature mean the person has patience while an odd number of dots means the person might be progressive. 

"Sometimes people's signature changes direction, it might get right-slanted or left-slanted. This proves the person has a changing personality," Meraz further explained, adding, "In one of the papers on criminal handwriting, the researchers found 50 characteristics. According to the research, if you find more than eight of the traits in someone's handwriting, it means the person has a criminal tendency." 

For example, Felon's claw, which usually appears in letters g, y, a,d and j, is a reflection of two things: the writer's deep belief at the subconscious level that s/he has been wronged all her/his life' and her/his decision to take revenge for those setbacks.

Other characteristics might be unclear such as angular letters, overwriting, the loop of the d, etc. Generally, this type of person's handwriting can be left or right-slanted- that means s/he is emotionally impulsive. 

Also, the double looping of a and o defines lying tendency. They tend to write beyond the right margin, which means they cannot keep in rules.

The era is now of e-signatures. How would forensic experts define someone's personality through signatures anymore? 

"There is nothing called the end of something. We might lose handwritten signatures someday to e-signatures but there are other options- body language analysis," said Meraz.

"Liars have a certain kind of body language. There are polygraphy tests, personality tests, projective tests etc. The only difference here is that determining handwriting doesn't need physical contact with the person while these tests require the person to be present at the spot," he added.  

No two signatures are the same

In May 2013, Bhavana Desai and Dr J L Kalyan, from the Department of Criminology and Forensic Science of Karnatak Science College, India published an article titled 'Forensic examination of handwriting and signatures.'  

The two researchers mentioned that the hand is an extremely complex and delicate mechanism. It has some 27 bones controlled by more than 40 muscles. 

Most of the muscles are situated in the lower arm and connected to the fingers by an intricate set of tendons. Their ability to manipulate a writing instrument is precisely coordinated by a timing system under neural controls of movements of the arm, the hand and the fingers. 

The precise order and timing of the movements determine the structure of the pattern. "Normally, it is said that writing is influenced by experience, environment, mental condition, and physical and emotional makeup. 

No two persons write exactly the same because no two persons have the same experience in life and therefore their writing will always vary. No one person writes exactly the same way twice," Desai and Dr Kalyan mentioned in the paper. 

They also said that several factors impact a signature such as muscular control, coordination, health, age, frequency of writing, temperature, etc. "Signature sometimes can signify one's mental state. Your normal signature will differ from the one you make when depressed or worried," Nusrat Yeasmin, a forensic expert at CID said while sharing her experiences.  

Meraz said that our handwriting changes over time because our personality changes. "And with that, the certain strokes or angles of our signatures also change. Take the letter t. The bar on the letter can mean a lot of things." 

"For example, how much pressure you put on the bar defines your willpower. Now, five years ago you might not possess much willpower, but now you do. This means the t's will be different now than the ones from five years back," he added.   

To compare a real signature with a forged one, forensic experts look into 12 points like uniformity, irregularities, size and proportion, alignment, spacing, degree of slant, weight of strokes, t-bars and i-dots,  loops, initial etc. 

"One of the most telltale strokes that will give away the forger is the t- crossing and another is the i- dot. No matter how careful the imitator may be, s/he will have a hard time not leaving her/his own characteristics behind in making these strokes," he further said. 

From seals to e-signatures 

It was the Sumerians who introduced the concept of signatures through the use of seals around 3500 BC. Typically attached to small round cylinders about an inch in length, these seals were pressed onto wet clay to authenticate documents. 

One of the most significant documents of history the Magna Carta was 'signed' with the King's seal in 1215. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the act of signing refers to putting a seal or signet on a letter or document to identify or authenticate it.

The Phoenicians, from 1800 to 1200 BC, created the first known alphabet, consisting of 22 consonants but no vowels. At around 1200 BC, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet and added vowels to the system, creating the first true alphabet with both consonants and vowels.

El Cid, a medieval Spanish nobleman and military commander, is credited with the first recorded signature of a well-known historical figure in 1069.

In 1677, the Parliament of England ordered that some contracts be signed to be legally binding, emphasising the importance of signatures in legal papers.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, signatures grew so common that, in 1867, England created the 'Statute of Frauds,' which required particular transactions to have a "note or memorandum in writing" that was "signed by the parties" to be legally binding.

Businesses communicated and signed contracts using Morse code and telegrams in 1869 before computers and captchas were introduced. To protect these documents, laws had to be enacted. In the same year, the New Hampshire Supreme Court accepted digital signatures via telegraph.

During the 20th century, the fax machine became a popular and effective tool for sending photographs of documents with legally binding signatures across phone networks. During the 1980s, numerous courts ruled signed documents sent via fax to be legally binding.

In June 2000, President Clinton signed into law the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce (E-SIGN) Act.

Recommendations for signatures 

"Generally, people think about beauty and uniqueness while choosing a signature but we do not recommend that in graphology. Rather, we recommend easy signatures that resemble one's handwriting. Because you do not need any mask to hide behind. So, keep it simple but detailed enough to have your authenticity,"  Meraz suggested.  

Also, signatures may differ according to one's profession, depending on which skills to focus on. For example, a doctor needs to be emotionally understanding, and more on the softer side. 

So, the graphologists recommend a signature that is connected at the bottom, and lightly slanted to the right, which means that you have an outgoing personality.

While a journalist needs good communication skills, s/he should have a connected signature. The first letter should be bigger to have a high face value. A journalist should be logical, objective, and unbiased – which will be portrayed through straight lettering without any slanting. And it must be clean, without any confusing characters. 

"We also recommend signatures to be a little bigger than the handwriting, to make a statement," Meraz added. 

Celebrities tend to choose a bit unclear signature to give autographs for their fans, mostly to separate their professional life from their personal one.