Authors
Puravi Tripathi
Abstract
The identification of the writer group attributes like gender, age and handedness from handwriting is an important goal in forensic studies field. In most criminal cases where handwriting is used as evidence where few handwritten characters extracted from tax form, ransom letters, anonymous letters, wills etc. are the disposal of the forensic document examiner. The analysis of handwritten documents from the view point of determining the writer has great bearing on the criminal justice system. A writer’s identity cannot be established through a single individual or general feature in the writing. Rather, identity is established through a combination of the significant features of writers. In order to analyze and identify a handwritten document “grip” also play an important role which give a particular type of handwriting with different handwriting characteristics. This can help a document expert to eliminate a suspect or group of suspects on the basis of their grip pattern. Keywords: Handwriting characteristics, Questioned documents, Grip pattern, Handwriting, Handwriting variations
Introduction
All handwriting exhibits identifying features which will hereafter be referred as its “characteristics”. The characteristics of handwriting fall into two classes these are:
1. Those derived from the general style to which the handwriting conforms, termed as “style characteristics” and
2. Those which have been introduced into the handwriting, whether consciously or unconsciously by the writer. These will be referred to as personal characteristics.
A handwriting comparison is generally made between the known standards and suspected document in order to establish that the writings are consistent, replete with individual handwriting habits and identifiable with each other. If all three criteria are met and the questioned writing is contemporaneous to the known standards that are supplied, positive identification of authorship or non-authorship can normally be made.
Pencil grasp is a term used to describe the position of the fingers involved in grasping a pencil. Two distinct types of grips, described by Napier (1956) as a power grasp or a precision grasp. A power grasp clamps the object between the fingers and the palm with the thumb in the same plane as the fingers. A precision grasp pinches the object between the fingers and the thumb with the thumb in opposition to the fingers.
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| APA Style | Tripathi, P. (2022). Variations in Handwriting Characteristics Due To Different Grip Patterns. Academic Journal of Forensic Sciences, 5(1), 26–42. |
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