NCJ Number
217671
Journal
Journal of Forensic Sciences Volume: 52 Issue: 2 Dated: March 2007 Pages: 467-472
Date Published
March 2007
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This paper reports on a statistical study of the sequence of strokes in the handwriting of 372 invited subjects as they formed 61 commonly encountered Chinese radicals and characters.
Abstract
The findings show that no 2 individuals wrote all of the 61 radicals and characters with the same sequence of strokes. This indicates that despite some basic rules for the sequence of strokes in writing Chinese characters, writers tend to develop their own habits. The findings also support the hypothesis that the handwriting of experienced writers is individually distinctive. Although stroke sequence is only one of the many characteristics that can identify Chinese handwriting, the presence of consistent differences in stroke sequence between two writing specimens constitutes significant evidence of different authorship. The 372 subjects from a local population were invited to participate in the study. Each received a questionnaire that contained all the stroke-sequence choices for the 61 Chinese radicals/characters. They were asked to complete the questionnaire by selecting their choices of the writing sequences as exhibited in their normal course of business writing. Those who wrote their radicals/characters in a sequence other than the choices provided were asked to write their own sequence of strokes in a blank area provided on the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics for each variable were obtained. 5 tables, 5 figures, and 12 references