Questioned Documents Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Bank notes are printed at (a), (c) and (d) only: Nashik, Salboni and Dewas.

India has four bank note presses. The Currency Note Press at Nashik and the Bank Note Press at Dewas belong to the government's Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India. The presses at Mysuru (Karnataka) and Salboni (West Bengal) belong to Bharatiya Reserve Bank Note Mudran, a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India.

Guntur in Andhra Pradesh has no note press, so options including (b) are wrong.

Answer: B

Invisible ink is also called sympathetic ink.

Sympathetic ink is writing that is invisible when it dries and appears only when treated, for example by heat, ultraviolet light or a chemical reagent. Lemon juice, milk and solutions of cobalt chloride are traditional examples, and secret writing in espionage and in prisons is examined in this way.

'Illegible', 'hidden' and 'concealed' ink describe the effect in everyday words, but sympathetic ink is the established technical name.

Answer: A

Both Statement I and Statement II are true.

Writing speed has a strong effect on the appearance of handwriting (II). A fast, practised writer simplifies and connects letter forms, drops unnecessary strokes and produces smooth, tapering lines, while slow writing shows careful, complete forms with blunt beginnings and endings. Simplified letter forms are therefore an indication of fast writing (I).

Document examiners use these signs to judge whether writing was natural or slowly drawn, as in many forgeries, so the options marking either statement false are wrong.

Answer: B

Interlineation is writing between two lines.

An interlineation is text added between existing lines of a document after it was first written, for example to add a figure or clause to a will or agreement. Examiners check whether it was made with the same ink and at the same time as the rest, and whether the spacing shows it was squeezed in later.

The term comes from 'inter' (between) and 'line'. Writing inserted between paragraphs, words or letters is described as an addition or insertion, not an interlineation.

Answer: A

The time tags are (a), (b) and (c) only.

Some ink manufacturers add tags to their inks so that the ink, and from it the earliest possible date of a document, can be identified: rare earth compounds, optical whiteners and fluorescent compounds, changed from year to year. Detecting the tag shows when a batch of ink was made, which can expose a document dated before the ink existed.

Alcohol is a common solvent in inks that evaporates as ink dries, so it cannot serve as a lasting tag, and options containing (d) are wrong.

Answer: C

India ink was invented in China.

The ink made from fine soot (lamp black) bound with glue, ground with water on an inkstone, was developed in China, where it was used for writing and painting for well over two thousand years. In Britain it came to be called India ink because it was obtained through trade with India; it is also known as Chinese ink.

Egypt also made early carbon inks, which can make it a tempting answer, but the ink known as India ink is Chinese in origin. The name does not mean it was invented in India, and Syria is unrelated to it.

Answer: D

Imitating another person's handwriting is called simulated forgery.

In a simulated (freehand) forgery the writer copies the appearance of a model of the genuine writing, trying to reproduce its letter forms and features. It typically shows hesitation, slow strokes, pen lifts and tremor, because the writer is drawing rather than writing naturally.

Disguised handwriting is a writer changing his or her own writing, not imitating someone else's. Traced forgery copies by following the outline of a genuine signature, not by freehand imitation, and 'copied handwriting' is not the technical term.

Answer: C

The spacing for 100 characters is 212 mm.

Typewriter type sizes are defined by characters per inch. Elite type has 12 characters to the inch, and pica has 10:

\[ \begin{aligned} \text{elite: } \frac{100}{12}\ \text{in} &= 8.33 \times 25.4 \\ &\approx 212\ \text{mm} \\ \text{pica: } \frac{100}{10}\ \text{in} &= 254\ \text{mm} \end{aligned} \]

Measuring the length of a line of known characters is how examiners identify the type style of a typewritten document.

254 mm is the spacing of pica type, the most likely trap. 225 mm and 185 mm do not correspond to 12 or 10 characters per inch.

Answer: B

The deliberate departure from one's own writing is disguised handwriting.

In disguise the writer alters his or her own natural writing to avoid being identified, for example by changing the slant, size or letter forms, or by writing with the other hand. Disguise is hard to sustain, so the writer's habits tend to reappear, especially in less conscious features such as spacing and pen pressure.

Simulated handwriting imitates someone else's writing. 'Personal' handwriting is one's ordinary writing, and abnormal handwriting is writing affected by illness, injury, intoxication or awkward conditions, not a deliberate change.

Answer: D

The individuality of handwriting was statistically validated by Srihari.

Sargur Srihari and his colleagues published 'Individuality of Handwriting' in 2002, analysing samples from about 1,500 writers representative of the US population with computer-extracted features. They showed that writers could be distinguished with high confidence, giving the first large-scale statistical support for the premise behind handwriting examination, in response to challenges under the Daubert standard.

Albert S. Osborn wrote the classic Questioned Documents, and Ordway Hilton and Wilson R. Harrison wrote standard texts of document examination, but none of them validated individuality statistically.