My signature is very minimalistic.
A couple of angular lines, and some wavy lines in the middle.
My name has ascenders at the start and the end, so the middle looks like I dragged my pen lazily across the paper.
It was a conscious choice when I was around 13, that I didn’t want to waste my time signing my name, when any sufficiently motivated person could forge it anyway.
I have had to put up with some grief for my choice though.
Once a package delivery man refused to give me the box, until I showed him all the other cards having the same signature and my photo.
I usually throw people for a loop (no pun intended) with mine because, essentially, the only legible letter is the first one, of my first name, which I don’t go by.
I give a first letter of my first name, then what might be identified as the first letter of my middle name (depending on how fast I’m writing it) followed by something that sort of looks like the first letter of my last name. After that, I just sort of freestyle some squigglies and I usually try to incorporate an ‘III’ (I’m a third) within a ‘k’ (the last letter of my last name) … but that never works; it usually looks like I’ve become frustrated in the attempt to sign my named and decided to scrap the whole effort at the end.
You can read my initials in mine if you know what my name is. I rarely use my signature any way. I never sign credit card receipts with it. I always sign these with a famous or infamous persons name. No one ever notices.
If I have the time to sign thoughfully it’s very legible. When I have to sign it 20 times in rapid succession it deteriorates noticably, but only as far as the third choice.
My last name ends with “an”. For purposes of this exercise we’ll pretend its’ Mulligan.
If it’s one signature only it’s Gwendolyn D Mulligan, all with a perfect matching slant.
If it’s a stack of papers that all need signing fast by about the fifth one the ascenders and descenders stopp lining up so well. By number 10 it looks more like Gwendlyn D Mulliger. After 20 or so it’s Gwen____ Mull______ (except the _____s are more squiggly).
Personally I don’t offhand see why you couldn’t. The signature I use to sign cheques with is different (being squiggles) than the signature I use to sign E-mails with (“/a”). I would imagine, but admittedly have no real evidence one way or the other, that the signature affixed to the form letters I get from my congressperson is probably different than what they use to sign the receipt at Chili’s.
Legally, well, IANAL. On the other hand, I’ve had both paper signatures and “electronic signatures”, so it’s clearly possible to have multiple signatures, to an extent. It would seem to me that the purpose of a signature is to authenticate a document. Since my stick figure is at least as distinctive as my squiggle, I’m on record as adopting it as a mark of my identity, and would agree that it authenticates what I affix it to as representing my will, I don’t offhand see why one couldn’t have two signatures (or more; somewhere, I think my father has an inkan with the family name seal).
Now, though, I admit to some curiosity, although in a practical sense of course as a general rule how you sign your name doesn’t mean squat.
My lovely wife is definitely an exception. I don’t know what the heck her signature is supposed to be, but it bears only the most passing similarity to her name, as far as I can tell. She did change it after we got married–it used to be squiggle squiggle, now it’s squiggle squiggle hyphen squiggle. Just so there’s no mistaking her marital status, I guess.
My own signature ain’t great, but you can tell what’s being attempted, I think. My first name is mostly readable, then the Si from my last name; but I surrendered a long time ago on all those damn cursive m’s. Who designed cursive writing, anyway? A lower-case n has one hump, and an m has two; but in cursive, they have two and three humps. As a result, my signature trails off into a random-length series of humps, followed by abject surrender as the rest of my last name is flattened into one dimension.
You can see the opening “M,” but after that it gets pretty scrawly. The pen doesn’t lift up once, neither between my first and last names nor between finishing the last name and crossing the t’s. And the crossed line cuts back through most of the name, not just through the t’s. But it **is **a consistent shape, though illegible.
For very important documents when I take the time it looks like my initials followed by squiggles. On daily notes, prescriptions, etc, it has become what my staff refer to as “the star”. I actually had a check returned once because it didn’t match the signature card. I had to go in and sign a new card. However, my handwriting is essentially illegible anyway. I strongly believe that’s the only reason I was accepted to medical school (they required a handwritten essay and I always thought that they assumed that the ones they couldn’t read were brilliant and admitted those applicants).
Two fairly legible capital letters, followed by 2 wavy lines. But it’s important that I dot the “i” in the appropriate place over the second wavy line.
I use my initials and my last name. The first initial is legible, the second - well, if you know what it is it’s recognizable about half the time, while the rest is just a jagged scribble. My wife’s is almost copperplate standard in legibility and neatness.
Now there’s more of us, but I’m in that same category. I remember when I was younger trying to work on a distinctive signature but it just didn’t come naturally to me and seemed more work than it was worth.
As I mentioned above, the signature I use on legal documents is different from the one I use when I sign books.
For that matter, I sign some documents using first & last name, some using those with middle initial or middle name, and some using only first initial & last name. I probably have five or six different signatures, all told.
As long as there is no intent to defraud, you don’t have to be consistent.
Depends on how much a hurry I’m in. If I’m checking out and paying by credit card, it looks like “Mama Z~~~~~~”. If I’m signing a letter, or a document or whatever, it’s usually more like “Mama Zap~~~”. It’s perfectly legible if I’m being careful, just usually there’s not a real need to be.
If I’m checking out at the grocery, with that electronic signature thingy that is scratched into COMPLETE illegibility and was too small to begin with, I probably sign “M~~~ Z~~~~” at best.
If you look really closely and stretch your imagination, you can kind-of make out an “A” (the first letter of my first name), but it’s downhill from there.
When you sign several dozen documents per day for your job, you start to take shortcuts (and no, my boss won’t let me get a signature stamp).