This is correct. I knew well the mathematician Samuel Eilenberg. I once saw him sign something and it was an S, some random squiggles, an l, an E, more squiggles and a g. I asked him about it and he said that was his signature period.
My worst experience has been to sign something online using a mouse. Just about impossible. I now have a .sig file that contains a photocopy of my signature at various sizes. My signature has deteriorated over the years, but no one seems to care since no one ever actually checks anway.
A former friend of mine (ghosted for voting for the orange menace) never learned cursive despite having been born around 1940 in NYC. He had constant problems with signatures. They would not accept a printed version. This may change as cursive writing disappears from schools.
That style of only-legible-first-letter of the names describes pretty much 75% of the signatures of my friends and family that I have seen, myself included. If you already know my name, you can sorta see how it adds up to my name, but if you don’t know my name, you wouldn’t be able to figure it out (well, you might get the first, since there’s not a lot of short names that begin with “P.”)
I once saw a set of John F Kennedy’s signatures from over the course of his presidency. The first had every letter in his name clearly delineated (in cursive) but as they progressed the letters deteriorated until except for his initials the signature was nothing but a squiggle.
I had to renew my state driver’s license last year, where the last step after the eye test and getting photographed is to write your signature on an electronic pad. It was on a high counter, about armpit level for me, and not movable, so it was very awkward. Plus you had only one chance (they let you decide if the picture was ok, or if you wanted a retake.) My resulting signature looks nothing like my real signature. I doubt it matters, since I can’t remember the last time looked at my DL’s signature.
I just slash a line thru the signature space.
No one has ever said a word.
An aside, when my kids were in school, if you went to school as a parent, for whatever reason you signed a paper in the front offices. I flipped thru it one day. It was something like 30 pages on this clip board. They just added a new sheet when the previous one was filled up. Totally unreadable.
It wouldn’t be able to be used as evidence. No one cleared or looked at the signatures.
Just lists and lists of names and times.
That were screwed up because the nearest wall clock didn’t work properly at Daylight savings every fall.
I signed Yoko One for years. No one ever noticed or said anything.
One time I was putting on a sticker "my name is: at school. I accidentally wrote Yoko Ono. Walked around the book fair as Yoko Ono. No one said a word.