The most common problems in forensic science revolve around signature identification on negotiable instruments such as cheques, contracts, deeds and credit charges, Other types of cases include embezzlement, industrial espionage, threats, extortion and blackmail. In most cases, questioned documents are compared with known genuine writing to determine their status. Attorneys need to know how to select appropriate documents for forensic document examiners and what forensic document examiners can and cannot determine about the evidence. This American book is aimed at lawyers who find themselves dealing with questioned document cases.
Chapters include choosing a forensic document examiner; questioned document cases; working with a document examiner; collecting and preserving documents; evolution of the written word; handwriting characteristics; factors that influence handwriting; principles of handwriting and handwriting information; materials from which documents are ma`de; office equipment; forgery and fraud; detecting fraudulent documents; opinions, reports and exhibits; preparation for court and deposition; deposition testimony; presenting a document case; cross-examination; and court citations pertaining to handwriting.

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Joe Nickell is a former investigator and a senior research fellow at the Centre for Inquiry in Amherst, New York. He explains how forensic experts detect forged handwritings, uncover alterations in documents and identify the authorship of disputed or anonymous writings in both modern and historical documents. The book also provides information on uncovering forged prints, paintings and other works of art.

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The author is a former FBI document examiner whose first book was on Rubber Stamp Examinations. This book breaks new ground in document analysis and for the first time collects those techniques of Digital Image Processing (DIP) relevant to the field under one cover.
DIP is becoming the standard practice in the field, an mat soon replace photography and microscopes as the foremost tools of the document examiner. Inlcuded in the book is all the relevant information needed about hardware and software for starting up, as well as step by step directions through every technique.. The table of contents is as follows:
- Chapter 1, overview of document examination with the computer
- Chapter 2, restoring faint, faded and fuzzy
- Chapter 3, comparing and contrasting images
- Chapter 4, removing obliterations
- Chapter 5, specialised use of the scanner
- Chapter 6, forgeries through Digital Image Processing
- Chapter 7, colour separations
- Chapter 8, courtroom chart preparation
- Chapter 9, protocols
- Chapter 10, equipment
- Chapter 11, other considerations and techniques
- Bibliography

This book is aimed at providing document examiners with an introduction to the effects of legal and illegal drugs on handwriting. The opening chapter looks at how drugs exert their actions on the human body. Wellingham-Jones goes on to describe the effects of specific drugs on handwriting, relying on her own extensive experience studying handwriting. She also describes the current state of the literature on this subject. Illegal drugs are covered in a separate chapter, as are tranquillisers and antidepressants, the group of drugs with the biggest effect on handwriting.

Ron Morris has worked as an examiner of questioned documents for the Metropolitan Police Department, based in Washington DC. His book teaches police, lawyers, forensic scientists, private detective, fiction writers the major principles involved in handwriting analysis. It explains how to obtain handwriting specimens and evidence and how to interpret an examiner's report.

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For the first time in the field of questioned document examination, Handwriting Identification: Facts and Fundamentals consolidates the information from published and unpublished sources that is essential to the expansion of a practitioner's general knowledge of handwriting identification and to the proper education of novices. Written in a question and answer format, the book suggests some of the questions that one might ask of an examiner and provides the answers the knowledgeable and competent examiners should be expected to give. This book is a valuable addition to all libraries and to every practising document examiner, as well as very lawyer handling cases in which the authenticity of handwriting might be disputed. Features of this book include the provision of an overview and fundamental principles of handwriting examination and a description of both the strengths and the weaknesses of this area of forensic document examination (FDE). The authors describe precisely the 21 discriminating elements of writing by which one writer is, or may be, distinguished from others, and by which one person may be associated with writings that he or she has executed. This volume provides the most complete assembly of axioms, maxims, principles and laws pertaining to the study of writing and writing identification.
 

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This book provides a resource to lawyers who are involved in the large number of trials concerning questioned document evidence. It is a concise and ready reference ‚ providing a one-stop information source to aid them in their work. Questioned document analysis is applied to many types of investigation: fraud, murder, suicide, drug trafficking / clandestine labs, sexual offences, threats and extortion, blackmail, arson, bombings, theft, etc. The focus is very specific ‚ to explain to the lawyer some of the basics of document examination so that he or she is in a better position to present document evidence and interrogate their own and opposition witnesses in court. References are also made to professional literature, so that the lawyer can easily seek further information. The book contains case examples from the USA, UK, The Netherlands, Germany, Nepal, Israel, Jordan, Russia, Romania and more.

This book reflects the two halves of Sassoon’s work in this field – the artistic and the scientific. This book is a collection of her papers and writing from around the world over more than a decade. It reflects her work in the educational and medical aspects of handwriting, as well as in the more general area of letterforms. It is all put into perspective, tracing the sequence of events and the gradual evolution of her theories, as one study after another opened up aspects of handwriting that had not previously been investigated. Topics covered include an analysis of pen-holds, the variability of written letterforms, the medical and therapeutic aspects of handwriting, children’s signatures, writers cramp, curriculum planning, handwriting as an indicator of success and the psychology of calligraphy.

This book is part of the Taylor and Francis Forensic Science series, and is intended to provide a clear and concise overview of modern forensic document examination. Different types of handwriting, typewriting, inks and paper are covered. Methods include infrared radiation, ultraviolet radiation, electrostatic detection and microscopy examination. This book is an invaluable guide for both trainee and experienced document examiners.

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