A handwriting exemplar is a piece of writing that can be examined forensically, as in a handwriting comparison. The use of an exemplar is especially important to questioned document examination.
A handwriting exemplar is a piece of writing that can be examined forensically, as in a handwriting comparison. The use of an exemplar is especially important to questioned document examination.
Handwriting exemplars are used by a document examiner to determine the writing habits of an individual. Ideally, the exemplars will provide an adequate picture of the writer's habits such that a meaningful comparison can be conducted with the questioned material.
There are two types of handwriting exemplars that may be used; request writings and collected writings. Request writings are obtained from an individual specifically for the purposes of conducting a handwriting comparison whereas collected writings are samples the individual produced for some other, unrelated reason generally in the course of their day-to-day activities.
The two types of exemplars are complementary to one another. Request writings can be controlled to some degree by whoever obtains them. That is, it is possible to exercise some control over the writing to ensure that it is written in a comparable manner using a similar writing instrument, similar paper, etc. Most important, the text to be written is dictated to the writer so that it can either match the questioned text exactly or be modified to ensure comparability without exactly matching the text if, for example, the text itself should remain unknown. The primary concerns with request writing is that the writer might attempt to intentionally alter (disguise) their writing habits or the sample might not display the full range of the writer's natural variation. Collected writings are less likely to be affected by intentional alteration (disguise) and, if sufficient quantities can be obtained, should cover the writer's range of natural variation. As a result, the limitations of either type can be overcome by the other.
The following are a few examples of pre-determined text passages that have been used to obtain request exemplars. The text may be used exactly as shown here or modified to incorporate specific words or letter combinations that match the text of the questioned document.
The London Letter
Our London business is good, but Vienna and Berlin are quiet. Mr. D. Lloyd has gone to Switzerland and I hope for good news. He will be there for a week at 1496 Zermott Street and then goes to Turin and Rome and will join Colonel Parry and arrive at Athens, Greece, November 27 or December 2. Letters there should be addressed King James Blvd. 3580. We expect Charles E. Fuller Tuesday. Dr. L. McQuaid and Robert Unger, Esq., left on the 'Y. X.' Express tonight. [1]
The Egyptian Letter
Dear Sam:
From Egypt we went to Italy, and then took a trip to Germany, Holland and England. We enjoyed it all but Rome and London most. In Berlin we met Mr. John O. Young of Messrs. Tackico & Co., on his way to Vienna. His address there is 147 upper Zeiss Street, care of Dr. Quincy W. Long. Friday the 18th, we join C. N. Dazet, Esquire and Mrs. Dazet, and leave at 6:30 A.M. for Paris on the 'Q. X.' Express and early on the morning on the 25th of June start for home on the S. S. King.
Very sincerely yours, [1]
Signature of writer
The Class of "16" Letter
Dear Zach,
Well, the old class of "16" is through at last. You ask where the boys are to be. Val Brown goes on the 24th to Harvard for law. Don't forget to address him as "Esquire." Ted @!$#@$ takes a position with the N. Y. W. H. & H. R. R., 892 Ladd Ave., Fall River, Massachusetts, and Jack McQuade with the D. L. & W. at Jersey City, N. J. 400 E. 6th Street. William Fellows just left for a department position in Washington; his address is 735 South G. St. At last account, Dr. Max King was to go to John Hopkins for a Ph.D. degree. Think of that! Elliott goes to Xenia, Ohio, to be a Y. M. C. A. secretary. I stay here for the present. What do you do next? How about Idaho?
Yours truly, and Goodbye, [1]
Signature of writer
National Park Tour Letter
A tour through our national parks would be enjoyable to you, I know. We left Los Angeles at 7:45 A.M., September 20, via Valley Boulevard, and motored to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. From there we drove to Zion National Park in Utah; next a jump to Yellowstone. Then we drove to the coast, into California, and through the Redwood Forest to San Francisco, the commercial Hub, arriving at 9:30 P.M., October 21. Here Mr. and Mrs. John X. Dix of 685 East Queen St., Topeka, Kansas joined us. I found the roads good, some quite equal to the best. [2]
A letter is a written message conveyed from one person to another through a medium. Something epistolary means that it is a form of letter writing. The term usually excludes written material intended to be read in its original form by large numbers of people, such as newspapers and placards, although even these may include material in the form of an "open letter". The typical form of a letter for many centuries, and the archetypal concept even today, is a sheet of paper that is sent to a correspondent through a postal system. A letter can be formal or informal, depending on its audience and purpose. Besides being a means of communication and a store of information, letter writing has played a role in the reproduction of writing as an art throughout history. Letters have been sent since antiquity and are mentioned in the Iliad. Historians Herodotus and Thucydides mention and use letters in their writings.
Handwriting recognition (HWR), also known as handwritten text recognition (HTR), is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input from sources such as paper documents, photographs, touch-screens and other devices. The image of the written text may be sensed "off line" from a piece of paper by optical scanning or intelligent word recognition. Alternatively, the movements of the pen tip may be sensed "on line", for example by a pen-based computer screen surface, a generally easier task as there are more clues available. A handwriting recognition system handles formatting, performs correct segmentation into characters, and finds the most possible words.
Handwriting is the writing done with a writing instrument, such as a pen or pencil, in the hand. Handwriting includes both block and cursive styles and is separate from formal calligraphy or typeface. Because each person's handwriting is unique and different, it can be used to verify a document's writer. The deterioration of a person's handwriting is also a symptom or result of several different diseases. The inability to produce clear and coherent handwriting is also known as dysgraphia.
While Alfred Dreyfus was serving his sentence on Devil's Island, in France a number of people began to question his guilt. The most notable of these was Major Georges Picquart.
In forensic science, questioned document examination (QDE) is the examination of documents potentially disputed in a court of law. Its primary purpose is to provide evidence about a suspicious or questionable document using scientific processes and methods. Evidence might include alterations, the chain of possession, damage to the document, forgery, origin, authenticity, or other questions that come up when a document is challenged in court.
Cursive is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and modern-day usage across languages and regions; being used both publicly in artistic and formal documents as well as in private communication. Formal cursive is generally joined, but casual cursive is a combination of joins and pen lifts. The writing style can be further divided as "looped", "italic", or "connected".
Forensic linguistics, legal linguistics, or language and the law, is the application of linguistic knowledge, methods, and insights to the forensic context of law, language, crime investigation, trial, and judicial procedure. It is a branch of applied linguistics.
The "From Hell" letter was a letter sent alongside half of a preserved human kidney to George Lusk, the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, in October 1888. The author of this letter claimed to be the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who had murdered and mutilated at least four women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London in the two months prior to Lusk receiving this letter, and whose vigilance committee Lusk led in civilian efforts to assist police in efforts to identify and apprehend the perpetrator.
The "Dear Boss" letter was a message allegedly written by the notorious unidentified Victorian serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. Addressed to the Central News Agency of London and dated 25 September 1888, the letter was postmarked and received by the Central News Agency on 27 September. The letter itself was forwarded to Scotland Yard on 29 September.
The American Crisis, or simply The Crisis, is a pamphlet series by eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosopher and author Thomas Paine, originally published from 1776 to 1783 during the American Revolution. Thirteen numbered pamphlets were published between 1776 and 1777, with three additional pamphlets released between 1777 and 1783. The first of the pamphlets was published in The Pennsylvania Journal on December 19, 1776. Paine signed the pamphlets with the pseudonym, "Common Sense".
Mail merge consists of combining mail and letters and pre-addressed envelopes or mailing labels for mass mailings from a form letter.
The "letter of appointment" is a controversial three-page document used by James J. Strang and his adherents to prove that he was the designated successor to Joseph Smith as the prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It formed part of a four-tiered argument for succession, being that according to various passages in Doctrine and Covenants, a prophet successor had to be A) appointed by Joseph Smith, B) ordained by angels, C) receive revelations as Smith did and D) translate ancient records certified by witnesses. Sent from Nauvoo, Illinois on June 19, 1844, to Strang in Burlington, Wisconsin, this letter was highly influential at gathering support for Strang's claim to succession until his death. Following Strang's murder in 1856, the letter passed through various hands until acquired by Yale University, where it currently forms a part of its Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
The Bixby letter is a brief, consoling message sent by President Abraham Lincoln in November 1864 to Lydia Parker Bixby, a widow living in Boston, Massachusetts, who was thought to have lost five sons in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Along with the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address, the letter has been praised as one of Lincoln's finest written works and is often reproduced in memorials, media, and print.
The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians is an epistle attributed to Polycarp, an early bishop of Smyrna, and addressed to the early Christian church in Philippi. It is widely believed to be a composite of material written at two different times, in the first half of the second century. The epistle is described by Irenaeus as follows:
A salutation is a greeting used in a letter or other communication. Salutations can be formal or informal. The most common form of salutation in an English letter includes the recipient's given name or title. For each style of salutation there is an accompanying style of complimentary close, known as valediction. Examples of non-written salutations are bowing, waving, or even addressing somebody by their name. A salutation can be interpreted as a form of a signal in which the receiver of the salutation is being acknowledged, respected or thanked. Another simple but very common example of a salutation is a military salute. By saluting another rank, that person is signalling or showing his or her acknowledgement of the importance or significance of that person and his or her rank. Some greetings are considered vulgar, others "rude" and others "polite".
A valediction, or complimentary close in American English, is an expression used to say farewell, especially a word or phrase used to end a letter or message, or a speech made at a farewell.
The Staunton–Morphy controversy concerns the failure of negotiations in 1858 for a chess match between Howard Staunton and Paul Morphy and later interpretations of the actions of the two players. The details of the events are not universally agreed, and accounts and interpretations often show strong national bias.
As the use of letters increased in popularity, guides began to emerge on how to correctly write and form a letter and as to what was proper, and what was not. Many of these Victorian conventions are a way of understanding tensions in nineteenth-century England, such as the urge to speak from the heart, but never more than was proper.
This is a software system for forensic comparison of handwriting. It was developed at CEDAR, the Center of Excellence for Document Analysis and Recognition at the University at Buffalo. CEDAR-FOX has capabilities for interaction with the questioned document examiner to go through processing steps such as extracting regions of interest from a scanned document, determining lines and words of text, recognize textual elements. The final goal is to compare two samples of writing to determine the log-likelihood ratio under the prosecution and defense hypotheses. It can also be used to compare signature samples. The software, which is protected by a United States Patent can be licensed from Cedartech, Inc.
William Shakespeare's handwriting is known from six surviving signatures, all of which appear on legal documents. It is believed by many scholars that the three pages of the handwritten manuscript of the play Sir Thomas More are also in William Shakespeare's handwriting. This is based on many studies by a number of scholars that considered handwriting, spelling, vocabulary, literary aspects, and more.