259
SEREK DAVIS
PAGE
6
Hong Kong Commission.
Report 750809
there are the structure, slant,
movements
-
formations
Secondly,
speed and fluency
accidentally.
www
-
which
can
be modified
at will.
pressure, size,
tendencies
which
may
vary but
normally remain relative but can be altered intentionally or
Neither the 'formations' nor the 'tendencies' are reliable on
their own for identification of handwriting;
it is the
personal
idiosyncrasies
habits
that should be used.
The habits are subconscious and constant, remaining So
because they are not seen by the writer; nor by those
looking normally or even closely at handwriting. They are
minute unconscious decisions unknown to the writer;
therefore becoming consistent.
As an example of these personal idiosyncrasies (habits) it
would be unusual if a person knew, without either reflection
or physically reproducing the movement, in which direction
he writes a capital '0', clockwise or anti-clockwise; or,
which stroke of a capital 'T' is written first, whether the
vertical or the horizontal, and which stroke is the last used
to produce a capital 'E'. Similarly, there are minute
subconscious decisions as to where in the text a writer
stops to cross a lower case 't' or dot an 'i'; at which
points of writing continuous words does
the pen, instinctively and consistently. | have used the
English language as an example because of the material in
question but the same dicta apply consistently in the minute
unnoticed detail of all languages. These are a selection of
the many types of personal idiosyncrasies that occur in any
person's handwriting which should be found by the expert
and recognised when demonstrated.
he pause to lift
Continued