People’s handwriting changes over time. This may be due to aging, illness, injury,emotional changes or many other causes. For this reason examples that were created within two or three years of the questioned document are best for comparison. Q9 Consulting provides a list to its document examination clients to help find useful documents. There can never be too many documents for comparison. There can be too few.

Use of objective techniques rather than subjective techniques is valuable for determining when a document was written. In a case involving whether a questioned signature was made by the person whose name was signed, I determined the person did sign the letter. The retaining attorney was hoping that another person had signed the person’s name to the letter. By using quantitative techniques I determined the letter was signed recently rather than several years earlier according to the date on the letter. This implied the letter was drafted to fabricate evidence in the case. When the opposing side was presented with the evidence they immediately settled the case.

The age of documents may also be determined by examination of the paper, ink, toner and other attributes of the document. Some of these examinations require engaging specialists such as ink chemists, paper experts and others.