How important is a legible signature?

In My Humble Opinion
21

My signature used to be legible, where each letter in the name was individually recognizable, at least if one knew my cursive writing. Now it’s just a big scribble. But, as others have said - as long as it’s a consistent scribble, no one cares. (Though I did have to change my reference signature with the Credit Union a few years ago because of it.)

The advantage to this, to my mind, has been that my scribble is almost completely unforgable. Plus it’s faster. (Not an isignifigant concern when signing out of the logs was what would keep one awake.)

22

I hate illegible signatures. I used to work in a hospital, and it was incredibly annoying to try to track down who had written a particular note in the chart if I had questions about it. If your signature is a scrawl, how does it identify you to others? Sure, if all you are doing is signing checks, etc, and your name is right there, sign however you like. But if not, you need to sign so that it can be read, or print your name somewhere. I used to make the post docs and interns who I supervised print their names if they were going to sign with a scrawl.

23

technically your signature can be anything you want from a legal standpoint, a smiley face, a little house, your cats tail. you just need to be consistent. my sig is the vaguest sketch of my initials. after working for a company where I was the only employee but still had to sign 50 frigging things a day but signature turned into just initials and has been slowly degrading ever since. if it wasnt for the speed (or slow) factor I would have started using a smiley devil ages ago for my signature.

24

I deal with real estate papers and I get morons all the time who think it’s cute to sign with just a swash of ink. If they are nice the will make apologies and say something like, “This is my signature when I know I will be signing lots and lots of times.”

I tell them that I want a real signature.
When they try to bluff me and say it is their signature, I ask to see their driver’s license, which always has a fuller one.
If they balk I tell them they can take the papers home and sign them when they are ready.
They always come around.
No way do I want to get stuck with an unenforceable contract because of a deniable signature.

25

When I was young I was mocked endlessly by a particularly assholeish teacher I had because of my bad handwriting. As a result, I now have beautiful handwriting. My signature is the same, only slightly larger - a sign of a healthy ego, if the handwriting analysis course I took for fun is to be believed.:slight_smile:

26

Maybe in that guy’s experience.

I have a relatively legible signature. If you’re a Hebrew speaker, that is… it’s a speed-written vaguely recognizable version fo my first name in Hebrew script. European shop owners, for some reason, cannot always decipher it… :smiley: and so I’ve been asked to show ID more than once.

'Course, what may be setting off their alarms is the fact that I’m signing going right-to-left, so this is obviously not a legitimate signature, right :smack:

27

My sig is a unique symbol derived from my initials. It’s the same one I use on everything, including a drivers license and banking docs.

As mentioned above, it doesn’t matter what your sig says or looks like, as long as it uniquely identifies you in some way, you can repret it accurately, you can distinguish it from forgeries, and is used consistently to identify you.

I’ve had people look at it funny, but since it matches my drivers license and the backs of my credit cards, nobody has ever had a problem with it.

I sign my name a lot, so it’s just easier to reduce my sig to a symbol.

28

repeat

29

I vote via absentee ballot. My signature has devolved so badly since I registered to vote (currently, it is not recognizable as being in any human language) that a couple years ago, they sent it back, along with a photocopy of my old sig, because they were so dissimiliar. To get them to count my vote, I had to forge my own signature. Very wierd.

30

While my cursive is pretty good, my signature is D[Squiggle] G[squiggle] J[squiggle w/ flourish] (Because I still go by Junior, legally speaking.)
Not only is it only unreadable, I worked to make it so. Having to sign my name to 80+ documents a day, I practiced on how to make it faster to write.

Peace - DESK

31

Never busted for illegibility, but did get yelled at during my house closing because I don’t sign my name with my middle name included. Even though one of the billion documents or so was a name thing that any variation of my name was me, I had to go back and sign everything to that point that I’d already signed, even though my signature is so illegible you couldn’t tell if my middle name was in there or not.

32

From a legal standpoint, it doesn’t matter what you write. All that depends is your intent. If you intend for it to be your signature, then it is.

33

I agree. But the fact that no one noticed…that’s what got me. No one even looked.

My husband’s signature changed when he was in the service. When he got home he went to get his money of the bank and they wouldn’t give it to him until he “proved” he was the same guy. I think he had to bring his dad in with him and brought a birth certificate.

34

I do not believe that a signature must be legible. A signature is just a mark that is used to indicate that you agree to whatever the document is about, and as a result, each person should have a unique signature, even if they share their name with someone else. In fact, when I lived in France, it was pointed out to me several times that my signature was too legible, which they believed made it easier to forge. French signatures tend to be illegible, artistic things, usually composed of the persons initials overlapping each other.

That said, my signature is really not legible, although it does include both my first and last name in cursive. If you knew my name, you could read the signature. If not, then you wouldn’t have a clue what it said.

I use my signature on documents that have my name spelled out elsewhere, like checks, my driver’s license, credit cards, business letters, etc.

If I am “signing” something that requires that my name be legible (like a student registration card, to prove that I advised the student), I usually just write my name in my normal handwriting, which is perfectly legible when it needs to be.

On the rare occasion where I have to actually use my signature, but my name is not already on the document somewhere, I will scrawl the illegible signature, then write my name out next to or under the signature.

However, I do training courses, and I frequently need a list of names of the people who attended a given course, so that they can get credit for attending, or so that I can forward information to them. I usually do not have a printed roster ahead of time, so the sign-in sheet is often the only list I have of who actually attended the course. When they only include an illegible signature, I can’t give them any kind of credit for being there.

I also teach classes at a university, and I do come across the occasional student who feels that I should be able to figure out whose homework I am grading based on a totally illegible scrawl. After the first couple of warnings that I can’t give credit if I can’t read the name, most of them figure out that they should write their name legibly, rather than with their official signature.

35

Y’know, in high school I tried to write a beautiful and stylized signature. Then I saw my father’s signature and basically said, “Ah, screw it!” My signature has deteriorated over the years to become an illegible scrawl. One good thing: no one could ever duplicate it, so I believe it is an effective protection against identity theft! :smiley:

36

My signature has slowly evolved from just wirting my name in cursive like we were taught. I’ve tried to make a more artsy one with a big first letter and then just squiggles and such, but I can never make it work. I can’t even seem to make a decent simplified one like celebrities use to sign autographs. It never works.

37

Ugly, horrible, illegible chickenscratch when I write. Ugly, horrible, illegible chickenscratch when I sign. Although, you can make out the initial of my last name. Most people can’t see the first initial because it interlocks with the last.

38

How do you guys come up with a signature, then? Mine is a heavily modified version of my name in cursive, but it’s not one of those ultra-stylized things; I’ve never really figured out how to write that way.

39

Ditto that.

But oddly enough I’ve actually had people complement me on my signiture. I’ve been told it looks like an “artist” signature, what ever that means.

If anybody remembers the old “Tom & Jerry” cartoons, it looks almost exactly like the guys sig on the opening screen. (I can’t for the life of me remember his name though.)

40

Doctor’s and nurses comment on the illegiblity my signature. People have asked to see my drivers liscence and the signature is the same there. Any time I sign anything someone makes a remark about it. My wife would like to be able to sign my name for paying bills and stuff but can’t duplicate it. I will eventually get her one of those rubber stamps with my signature on it to save her the hassle. My hand writing isn’t that much better really. Even I have a hard time reading my handwritting sometimes.