Qde Definition of Terms
Qde Definition of Terms
Qde Definition of Terms
Alignment defect
- characters that write improperly in the following respect: a twisted letter,
horizontal misalignment, vertical misalignment, or a character "off its feet" these
defects can be corrected by special adjustments to the type bar and type block of a
type bar machine.
Allograph - a writing or signature made by one person for another or a style (block
capital, print script, or cursive form) of one of the 26 graphemes of the English
alphabet or of the ligatures or other symbols that accompany it.
Ample letter - that which encompasses more than the standard inner space in a given
letter.Characterized by fulsomeness and expanded ovals and loops.
Archive - collection of documents and records purposely stored for a defined period
of time.
Assisted writing - the result of a guided hand, produced by the cooperation of the
two minds and two hands of two persons.
Ball point pen - a writing instrument having as its marking tip a small, freely
rotating ball bearing that rolls the ink into the paper.Many of these pens use
highly viscous, non aqueous ink but in recent years construction of some pens have
been adopted to use water-based inks.
Baseline - the ruled or imaginary line upon which the writing rests.
Big Floyd - the FBI super computer that contains software allowing it to search
criminal records and draw conclusions from the available information in the hunt
for those responsible for an individual crime.
Bindle paper - clean paper folded used to contain trace evidence, sometimes
included as part of the packaging for collecting trace evidence.Most of the time,
white paper is used and has the consistency of butcher paper, the paper used in
deli markets.
Blobbing - the accumulation of ink on the exterior of the point assembly of a ball-
point pen that drops intermittently to the surface being written upon.
Blunt ending - the effect produce on commencement and terminal strokes of letters,
both upper and lower case, by the application of the writing instrument to the
paper prior to the beginning of any horizontal movement.
Body - that portion of a letter, the central part that remains when the upper and
lower projections, the terminal and initial strokes and diacritics are omitted.
Burring - a division of a written line into two or more, more or less equal
portions by a non-linked area generally running parallel to the direction of line
generation but moving away from the radius of a curving stroke.Sometimes referred
to as splitting.
Carbon copy - a copy of a typewritten document made by means of carbon paper.An
exact replica;duplicate.
Carbon ink - (India ink) one of the oldest form of writing ink commonly referred to
as India ink even though the ink was first used in China.In its simplest form
carbon ink consists of amorphous carbon shaped into a solid cake with glue.It is
converted into a liquid for writing by grinding the cake and suspending the
articles in a water-glue medium.Occasionally,a pigmented dye is added to improve
the color.
Case records - all notes, reports, custody records, charts, analytical data, and
any correspondence generated in the laboratory pertaining to a particular case.
Charred document - a document that has become blackened and brittle through burning
or through exposure to excessive heat.
Clogged (dirty) typeface - over prolonged use, the typeface becomes filled with
lint, dirt, and ink particularly in letters with closed loops such as p and g.If
these condition is allowed to continue without cleaning, the printed impression
will actually print with the clogged areas shaded or solid black.
Collected standards - a sample of writing made during the normal course of business
or social activity not necessarily related to the matter in dispute.
Conjoined letters - two letters that have been written in the common manner such
that the terminal stroke of the first is the initial stroke of the second.
Connection subtypes
� Supported - the body of the letter rests against or retraces the stem.
� Looped - the initial stroke forms a loop with the stem of the letter.
� Unsupported - the body of the letter does not follow or retrace the stem.
Contraction - a form of word abbreviation wherein one or more letters are omitted.
Didot system - a typographic measuring system used in Europe and based on the didot
point, similar to the U.S.,English Pica system.
Diphthong - the combination of two vowels in succession, the sound of which begins
with one and ends with the other.ex. oil,boy,out.
Document - any material that contains marks, symbols, or signs either visible,
partially visible, or invisible that may ultimately convey a meaning or message to
someone.
Fiber-tip pen - (porous-tip pen) a modern writing instrument in which the marking
element or point consists of a porous material through which the ink can flow.
Flow-back - an increase in the density of an ink line caused by the run of excess
ink along the finish of a stroke, occurring when the pen is lifted from the paper.
Fluency - freedom and other like terms, referring to a generally higher grade of
line quality that is smooth, consistent, and without any evidence or tremor or
erratic changes in direction of pen pressure.
Flying finish - the diminishing taper of a terminal stroke when the motion of the
instrument does not stop at the completion of a word.
Flying start - the growing taper of an initial stroke or the delicate initial hook
that appears where the motion of the instrument precedes actual writing.
Forced hand - a person's signature or writing executed while the hand was under the
physical compulsion or control of another person.
Forgery - (free hand imitation) a legal term that involves not only a non-genuine
signature or document but also intent on the part of its "marker" to defraud.
Graphonomics - the study of the science and technology of handwriting and other
graphic skills (coined in 1982) or the scientific study concerned with the
systematic relationship involved in the generation and analysis of writing and
drawing movements and the resulting traces of writing and drawing instruments
either on conventional media such as paper and blackboard or on electronic
equipment.
Guided-hand signature - a signature that is executed while the writer's hand or arm
is steadied in any way, also known as assisted signature.Assisted signatures are
most commonly written during a serious illness or in deathbed.
Habit - a persistently repeated element or detail of writing that occurs when the
opportunity allows.
Hand lettering - (hand printing) any disconnected style of writing in which each
letter is written separately.
Hiatus - a gap in writing stroke of a letter formed when the instrument leaves the
paper.An opening, an interruption in the continuity of a line.
Holographic document - any document completely written and signed by one person.
Indented writing - writing impressed into the surface of a page of paper of
pressure exerted upon the writing instrument when used on a previous page.
Inert hand - an execution of writing in which the person holding the writing
instrument exercises no motor activity whatsoever,conscious or unconscious.The
guide leads the writing instrument through the medium of the hand of the first
person.The writer may be feeble or a complete illiterate.
Infrared luminescence - a phenomenon encountered with some dyes used in inks and
colored pencils that when illuminated with a narrow band of light in the blue-green
portion of the spectrum give off luminescence that can be detected in the far red
or near infrared range.The technique is useful in distinguishing between certain
inks and colored pencils and in detecting or deciphering erasures.
Inorganic pigment - a natural or synthetic metal oxide, sulfide or other salt used
as a coloring agent for paints, plastics, and inks.
Insertion - the addition of writing and other material within a document such as
between lines and paragraphs or the addition of whole pages to a document.
Iron-gallotannate ink - this ink is found in fountain pens, was used as early as
the 8th century and with substantial improvement, is still in use today.
Joint or Juncture - the point or position at which two or more strokes meet within
a letter.
Kerning - the spacing of two letters closer together than customary when their
designs leave too much intercharacter white space.
Left-handed or wrong-handed writing - any writing executed with the opposite hand
from that normally used.Sometimes referred to as "writing with the awkward hand" it
is an attempt to disguise handwriting.
Legibility - the ease with which a reader recognizes individual letter and
character shapes.
Letter - any drawn, written, printed, or typed character, lower case or uppercase
that can be recognized as an allograph of the alphabet of any language.
Manual typewriter - a machine whose operation depends solely upon the mechanical
action set in motion by striking a letter or character key.
Mirror writing - writing that runs in the opposite direction to the normal pattern,
starts on the right side of the page and proceeds from right to left with reversed
order in spelling and turning of the letter images.
Moire - the impression with which the habits of the writer are executed on repeated
occasions or the divergence of one execution from another in an element of an
individual's writing that occurs invariably in the graph but may also occur in the
choice of the allograph or normal or usual deviations found between repeated
specimens of any individual's handwriting or in the product of any typewriter or
other record making machine.
Nonaqueous ink - ink in which the pigment or dye is carried in any vehicle other
than water.Inks of this class are found in ball-point pens, typewriter ribbons, and
stamp pads and are widely used in the printing industry.
Nodule - a small, rounded mass or lump of ink caused by an excessive deposit, the
result of gooping in some ball-point pens.
Nonce word - a word coined to fit a special situation.
Orthography - the principles by which the alphabet is set into correspondence with
the speech sounds.The art of spelling.
Patching - retouching or going back over a defective portion of a writing
stroke.Careful patching is a common defect in forgeries.
Pen position - the relationship between the pen point and the paper.Specifically,
the angle between the nib of the pen and the line of writing and between the pen
point and the paper surface are the elements of pen position.
Pencil lead - not really lead but a mixture of various types of waxes, clays,
graphite, and carbon.
Point - the basic typographic unit of measurement of fonts, line spacing, rules,
and borders, there are 12 points to a pica and 72 points to the inch, typically
used for vertical dimensions.
Pressure - the amount of force exerted on the point of the writing instrument,
technically termed point load.
Retracing - any stroke that goes back over another writing stroke.In natural
handwriting there may be many instances in which the pen doubles back over the same
course but some retracing in fraudulent signatures represents a reworking of a
letter form or stroke.
River - gaps in the writing or printing pattern that form a straggling white stream
down the page.
Secret ink - a material used for writing that is not visible until treated by a
developing process, also referred to as sympathetic ink.
Sequence of strokes - the order in which writing strokes are placed on he paper.
Serrations - roughness along the edges on an ink line seen under a microscope.
Shading - a widening of the ink stroke due to added pressure on a flexible pen
point or to the use of the stub pen.
Signatory - a signer with another or others.A person whose name is being inscribe
on a document who requires assistance in doing so.
Slant - the angle or inclination of the axis of letters relative to the baseline.
Splitting - the division of an ink line into two or more, ,ore or less equal
portions by a non inked area running generally parallel to the direction of the
stroke, sometimes called burring.
Synthetic dye inks - any ink consisting simply of a dye dissolved in water together
with the necessary preservatives.
Traced forgery - any fraudulent signature executed by actually following the
outline of a genuine signature with a writing instrument.
Trash mark - mark left on a finished copy during photocopying, results from
imperfections or dirt on the cover glass, cover sheet, drum, or camera lens of a
photocopy machine.
Tremor - lack of smoothness due to lack of skill, consciousness of the writing act,
deliberate control of the instrument in copying or tracing or an involuntary,
roughly rhythmic, and sinusoidal movement.Wavy back and forth movement on a written
line.
Typeface - the printing surface of the type block or type element.The name of a
particular design of printed characters and symbols.
Whirl - the curving upstroke usually of letters that have long loops but also on
some styles of the capital "W".
Wrong-handed writing - any writing executed with the opposite hand from that
normally used, often referred to as writing with the awkward hand.
Xerox - a positive photocopy made directly on plain paper.
Z-twist - a right-handed yarn twist in which the spiral slants like the middle part
of the letter "Z".
8. Indicators of forgery
1. Blunt starts and stops
2. Penlifts and hesitation
3. Tremor
4. Speed and Pressure
5. Patching