The Practice of Handwriting Identification

Abstract

This article describes, in detail and with examples, a methodology for analysing handwriting in order to determine the identity of the writer. This method is based on the procedure followed in forensic science laboratories and used as the basis for evidence in criminal and civil trials, and is based on its author's extensive experience in forensic document analysis. It describes the difficulties of applying this methodology to the identification of handwriting in non-modern literary and historical documents. Next, the limitations of current palaeographic practice in this respect are analysed, with examples; these limitations are found to be largely due to the limitations of print in conveying detailed graphic information. It proposes the use of the World Wide Web as a solution to this problem, and offers examples of Web-based analyses, using the forensic method, of English handwriting from the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, tenth-century Tibetan handwriting, and Cuneiform inscriptions from the seventh century BCE.