Questioned Documents Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The most frequently used technique is Copy forgery, also called simulated or freehand forgery.

In a copy forgery the forger studies a genuine signature and imitates it freehand. It needs only a model signature and some practice, so it is the method most often met in questioned document work. Its weakness is that the forger must concentrate on the form, so the writing tends to be slow and drawn, with tremor, blunt starts and stops, pen lifts and patching.

Traced forgery needs the model to be placed under or over the document and leaves guide-line traces, so it is used less often. Computer-aided forgery and projection forgery (tracing from a projected image) are specialised methods, far less common.

Answer: C

The single most useful characteristic is line quality.

Line quality is the visible record of how the pen moved: its speed, fluency, pressure and rhythm, shown in the shading, tapered starts and finishes and smoothness of the strokes. Writing at natural speed produces it unconsciously, and it is the feature a forger finds hardest to reproduce, because copying the form forces slow, careful writing. That makes it the most useful single feature both for identifying a writer and for detecting forgery.

Connectives, spacing and pictorial effect (the overall appearance) are useful too, but each is easier to imitate or varies more within one person's writing.

Answer: A

A perfect forgery of a long signature is not possible to accomplish perfectly.

A long signature contains many letters, connections and habitual movements, each written at the writer's own speed and pressure. A forger can imitate the general form, but cannot at the same time reproduce every one of the writer's unconscious habits while also writing fluently. The longer the signature, the more points of comparison there are, and the more certain it is that some will betray the imitation, through hesitation, tremor, pen lifts or differences in proportion.

So the options saying it may be possible in some cases or in competent hands are wrong in this textbook view, and 'difficult to accomplish' understates the point, which is that perfection cannot be achieved.

Answer: D

Age determination from handwriting may become possible with future research.

At present a writer's age cannot be reliably determined from handwriting. Handwriting matures through adolescence, stabilises in adult life and may deteriorate in old age, but these changes vary so much between individuals, and with education, practice and health, that no examiner can assign an age to a writing. The only defensible position is that reliable age estimation is not yet possible, though research on handwriting change may make it possible later.

The other options imply that age can be determined now in some circumstances: in the absence of illness, in some cases, or among adolescents. Each overstates what handwriting examination can do.

Answer: D

Pica type prints ten characters to the inch.

On typewriters, pica is the larger of the two common type sizes, with a pitch of ten characters per inch. Elite type is smaller, with twelve characters per inch. Examining typewritten documents, examiners measure the pitch first to narrow down the typewriter and typeface.

Twelve characters to the inch is elite, and the two do not have the same height, since pica is the larger. Pica was the most common size in India as elsewhere, so it is not rarely encountered.

Answer: B

The key defines an anonymous letter as one that contains no obvious clue to the identity of the writer.

In questioned document work, an anonymous letter is one whose author has concealed their identity: no name, or a false one, and nothing in the content that obviously reveals who wrote it. The examiner must then rely on handwriting, typescript, paper, ink and linguistic features to trace the writer.

A letter can be unsigned and still identify its writer from the content, so 'an unsigned letter' is too narrow. Not knowing the city it came from, or being written by an illiterate person, does not make a letter anonymous.

Answer: A

The analysis needed is of toner and defect marks on the drum.

Defects on the drum, platen glass or other parts of a photocopier leave marks (trash marks) that repeat on every copy it makes. Combined with analysis of the toner, which differs between makes and models, these marks can link a copy to one particular machine.

Defect marks alone, or toner alone, give weaker evidence, since toner may be shared by many machines and marks change as parts are cleaned or replaced. The font of the original document says nothing about the photocopier used.

Answer: A

Handwriting may change with neurological conditions.

Writing is a learned motor skill controlled by the brain and nervous system. Diseases such as Parkinson's disease, stroke and essential tremor, as well as alcohol and some drugs, can cause tremor, shaky strokes, reduced size and loss of fluency. Document examiners must consider such conditions when comparing questioned writing with specimens.

Temperature, humidity and place may affect the writing materials or conditions slightly, but they do not change an individual's handwriting in the way neurological disorders do.

Answer: A

FISH stands for Forensic Information System for Handwriting.

FISH is a computer system developed in Germany and adopted by the United States Secret Service in the 1990s. Scanned handwriting, especially threatening letters, is measured and stored, so that a new questioned writing can be searched against the collection to find possible matches for a document examiner to compare.

The other expansions change 'Information System' into 'Identification', which is not the system's name; it narrows a search, and the final identification is still made by a human examiner.

Answer: A

Both (A) and (R) are true.

Writing speed changes the look of handwriting: fast writing shows smooth, tapering starts and ends, even pressure, connected letters and simplified forms, while slow writing shows blunt ends, tremor, pen lifts and careful, complete letter shapes. So the Reason is true.

Simplification of letter forms, dropping unnecessary strokes and loops, is one of the recognised signs of rapid, skilled writing, so the Assertion is true as well. Document examiners use these speed indicators to spot slow, drawn forgeries. The options calling either statement false are therefore wrong.