Chapter 18 — Self-Check Quiz

24 questions: multiple choice and short answer. Try them closed-book. The answer key is in the collapsed block at the bottom.

Multiple choice

1. A questioned document is best defined as: - A. Any handwritten note - B. Any document whose source, authenticity, or history is in dispute and is therefore subject to forensic examination - C. A document that has been proven to be a forgery - D. Only a typed or printed legal instrument

2. Which examiner task sits at the most contested end of the validity spectrum? - A. Recovering indented writing with the ESDA - B. Detecting an added digit in a second ink under infrared - C. Concluding that one specific person wrote a ransom note "to the exclusion of all others" - D. Determining that a will and a contract were printed on chemically different papers

3. A collected (non-request) exemplar is: - A. Writing dictated to a suspect after arrest - B. Writing the person produced in the ordinary course of life, before any dispute arose - C. A photocopy of the questioned document - D. A computer-generated handwriting sample

4. The chief peril of a requested (dictated) exemplar is that: - A. It can never match the questioned wording - B. A subject who knows what is being collected may deliberately disguise their hand, or a suspected forger may have practiced the very writing in question - C. It is always inadmissible - D. It cannot be produced with the same pen as the questioned document

5. "Natural variation" in handwriting means: - A. Everyone's handwriting is identical - B. A single writer's genuine writing is a range, not a fixed image, so no one signs identically twice - C. Handwriting reveals personality - D. Forgeries always look natural

6. Which feature is often the single most telling in detecting a drawn forgery, because it reveals the process of writing? - A. The color of the ink - B. The neatness of the letters - C. Line quality (smoothness, pressure, fluency — versus tremor, pen lifts, hesitation) - D. The size of the paper

7. A traced forgery is produced by: - A. Signing the name in the forger's own hand, making no attempt to imitate - B. Following the genuine signature's lines (e.g., over a light box or an indented groove) - C. Copying a model freehand by eye - D. A genuine writer deliberately altering their own hand

8. Graphology is: - A. A validated branch of forensic document examination - B. The pseudoscientific claim that handwriting reveals personality, honesty, or criminal propensity — with no place in a forensic laboratory - C. The chemistry of ink dating - D. The recovery of indented writing

9. The core authorship claim of handwriting comparison, after NAS 2009 and PCAST 2016, is best described as: - A. As rigorously quantified as a DNA random match probability - B. Fully discredited, like bite-mark matching - C. Sitting in the contested middle — able to exclude and to flag simulation, but lacking a known, low error rate for individualizing a writer - D. Requiring no examiner judgment at all

10. A notable empirical finding offered in support of trained document examiners is that, compared with laypeople, they tend to: - A. Make more false-positive errors - B. Make fewer false-positive (wrong-attribution) errors, though they more often decline to reach a conclusion - C. Always reach a definite answer - D. Refuse to testify

11. Under infrared (IR) illumination, an added digit written in a different black ink can be detected because: - A. IR makes all inks glow the same color - B. Inks that look identical in visible light often behave differently in IR — one may stay dark while the other becomes transparent - C. IR physically removes the original ink - D. IR dates the ink to a specific month

12. "Ink dating by first appearance" (e.g., an ink formulation not manufactured until a known year) gives: - A. A precise calendar date the document was written - B. A no-earlier-than boundary — the document cannot predate the material it is written in - C. The identity of the writer - D. Nothing of forensic value

13. Destructive ink-aging analysis (estimating how recently a line was written by solvent loss, etc.) is best described as: - A. Routine, precise, and uncontested - B. Real but limited and controversial — reliable only within constraints, and not a basis for naming a specific month years later - C. Identical to infrared imaging - D. Forbidden in all laboratories

14. The ESDA recovers indented writing by: - A. Chemically staining the ink - B. Detecting minute differences in electrostatic charge held by the indentations, then developing them with a fine toner-like powder on a film - C. Cutting the page into thin sections - D. Photographing the page in color

15. A crucial virtue of the ESDA is that it is: - A. Destructive, so the document is consumed - B. Non-destructive — the original document is undamaged and remains available for ink and handwriting examination - C. Able to date the impression - D. Able to name the writer

16. Recovering indented writing is more defensible than handwriting authorship comparison because: - A. It is faster - B. It recovers content physically present in the page, rather than asking the examiner to make a subjective same-hand judgment - C. It is done by a different kind of examiner - D. It never fails

17. In the Lindbergh case, the document examiners (most prominently Albert S. Osborn) testified that: - A. The ransom notes could not be linked to anyone - B. Bruno Richard Hauptmann wrote the ransom notes, citing distinctive letterforms and shared unusual misspellings - C. Handwriting analysis was pseudoscience - D. The notes were typed, not handwritten

18. By this book's standard, the Lindbergh document comparison most honestly supported: - A. Individualization to the exclusion of all others - B. A strong association — the questioned writing is strongly consistent with Hauptmann and shares rare features with his hand — powerful corroboration, not metaphysical proof - C. No conclusion whatsoever - D. A confession

19. The bias amplifiers present in the Lindbergh document work included: - A. None; the examination was perfectly blind - B. Examiners who knew whose "known" writing they held, requested exemplars taken after arrest, and a national-sensation case with enormous pressure to convict - C. A double-blind, sequential-unmasking protocol - D. A quantified error rate published in advance

20. A disguised writing is: - A. A forgery traced over a light box - B. Genuine writing deliberately altered by its own author (e.g., to disclaim a document they really did write) - C. A blind forgery - D. Writing recovered by the ESDA

Short answer

21. In two sentences, explain why "the questioned signature shows features consistent with the known writer" and "the defendant signed this" are claims of very different strength — and which one the underlying method has not been shown to support.

22. Name three line-quality tells that suggest a signature was drawn (simulated) rather than fluently written, and state the honest conclusion they support.

23. Explain why recovering indented writing with the ESDA can be strong evidence while concluding who wrote that recovered text returns you to the contested part of the discipline.

24. In the cold case, state precisely what the charred insurance/partnership document and its indicated alteration do establish and what they do not — and give the honest status line for the file.

Answer key (click to expand) **Multiple choice:** 1-B · 2-C · 3-B · 4-B · 5-B · 6-C · 7-B · 8-B · 9-C · 10-B · 11-B · 12-B · 13-B · 14-B · 15-B · 16-B · 17-B · 18-B · 19-B · 20-B **Short answer (model points):** **21.** "Consistent with the known writer" is a *comparison* statement that keeps its uncertainty: the questioned writing falls within the range of features the known writer produces, which many writers might also do. "The defendant signed this" is an *individualization* claim that names one author to the exclusion of the world. The method has been shown to *exclude* and to flag *simulation*, but it has **not** been validated to support individualization at that strength — so the second sentence overstates what handwriting comparison can deliver. **22.** Any three: **tremor** in what should be a smooth curve; **pen lifts** (gaps) mid-letter where a fluent writer would not stop; **blunt, even pressure** (a drawn line, not a written one); **hesitation marks** where the writer paused to check the model. They support the honest conclusion that the signature shows **indications of simulation** — i.e., it was *drawn rather than written* — which is a more defensible call than naming *who* drew it. **23.** The ESDA *recovers content* — it makes visible writing that is physically present as impressions in the page; reading that recovered text is far closer to reading ordinary writing than to a subjective same-hand comparison, so the recovery itself is a demonstrable fact about the document. But the moment you ask whether *that recovered writing matches a particular suspect's hand*, you are back to handwriting comparison (§18.2–18.3): the contested authorship judgment, with no quantified error rate, that can exclude or find "consistent with" but cannot individualize to certainty. **24.** **Establishes:** that an insurance/partnership document was *altered* (an apparently changed beneficiary designation), recovered alongside indented writing — *consistent with* a financial motive for staging the scene, and pointing attention toward whoever stood to gain. **Does not establish:** *who* made the alteration, *when* it was made, or that the alteration is even connected to the death rather than an ordinary business dispute; and a *burned* document gives the examiner less to work with, not more. **Honest status:** *document tampering indicated; a possible altered beneficiary; motive thread strengthened; authorship and timing unproven.*