People are writing more than ever with their keyboards and phones, but handwritten notes have become rare. Even signatures are going out of style. Most credit card purchases no longer require them, and if they do, you can usually just scratch one out with your fingernail. The age-old art of handwriting is in decline.

This marks a profound shift in how we communicate, but for one group of experts it also raises an existential question. Forensic handwriting examiners authenticate handwritten notes and signatures — or reveal them to be fakes — by analyzing distinctive features in our writing. As people write less by hand, will handwriting examination become irrelevant?

A recent report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) suggests that the answer is no — if the field changes to keep up with the times. But the times are changing in more ways than one, and the decline in handwriting is only one of the challenges that the field will have to reckon with.

A range of natural variation in one writer's uppercase letter "E." Credit: NIST

How the Experts Do It

Emily Will is a board-certified handwriting examiner in private practice in North Carolina. She has examined signatures on countless checks, wills, deeds and trusts. She has inspected medical records to assess whether a doctor's signature may have been added at a later date than indicated, perhaps after a lawsuit was filed. She has also examined longer forms of writing, such as threatening or harassing letters and suicide notes. If the apparent suicide victim didn't write the note, the police might have a homicide on their hands.

To assess whether a piece of handwriting was written by a particular person, examiners need something to compare it against, so they collect writing samples that are known to be from that person. The type of writing has to be the same, whether a signature, cursive writing, or hand printing. The known samples should be from roughly the same time period as the handwriting in question, because our handwriting evolves over time. And having multiple known samples to compare against is key, as that will allow the examiner to consider the variability in a person's writing style.

"You're not a robot, so every time you sign your name, it'll look different," Will said. "That's what makes handwriting examination so interesting."

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