Introduction

Graphology is a practice which we do NOT do. It is a means of analysing handwriting with the aim of interpreting the personality of the author, although there is no scientific research which supports the reliability or effectiveness of this. As scientists, we do not consider graphology to be a reliable method of determining authorship of handwriting and signatures.

Graphologists examine handwriting in order to interpret the author's personality and, unlike forensic document examiners, are not trained to compare writings in detail in order to establish common authorship. The British Institute of Graphologists state on the home page of their website that graphology and forensic document examination are different disciplines. Some graphologists do claim to be forensic document examiners, although they are not registered with CRFP (the Council for the Registration of Forensic Practitioners) and some are unwilling to give evidence at Court.

Forensic document examiners adopt a scientific approach to determine whether a set of questioned (disputed) writing has been written by the same person that produced a given set of specimen (known) writing. This approach involves examining every character within both sets of writing in detail - construction, slope, fluency, proportions and connectivity (how characters are joined together) are some of the factors considered. Similarities and differences between the questioned and specimen writings are then evaluated according to their significance. The significance is assessed by an Examiner based upon their experience of looking at thousands of different writings from different people. How the features of the writings reflect the author's personality has no bearing on the examination or the interpretation of the findings.