Forgery - is my signature an easy target?

The number of times I have heard people comment that they have an indecipherable mess for a signature "so that it's harder to forge."

And it's quite wrong! The more illegible your signature, the easier it is for a forger to get away with it.

Who checks whether a signature is real or fake? Often bank tellers, or store clerks.

Are they experts in handwriting? No.

What are they looking for? Similarities of differences.

Which is easier to check out: recognizable letters that you can follow each one and check if they are made exactly the same way, or whirls and lines intersecting each other all over the place in a jumbled confusion?

Recognizable letters are easier to follow. Anyone can check out if the A is made the same as another A, or the tail on a g is done the same in both signatures.

An incoherent mixture of lines is much more difficult, it at all similar, to identify exactly.

Don't believe me? Try is and see.

Get a friend to write their signature, and also to make an illegible set of squiggles instead of a signature. You try to copy each one as best you can. Then ask another friend to tell you which is the forgery - the legible signature you copied or the set of squiggles you copied.

Both ofcourse are forgeries, but it will be much easier for the 3rd person to identify the legible imposter - provided you seriously made a good attempt to copy both versions exactly.

So make your signature legible. It's safer.

For more on Signatures check out the Signature Analysis Workbook, and for great party fun, check out the Signature Party Game.