As far as signatures go, mine is pretty much in the middle of the road. It’s my two initials and my surname: the T looks like a 7, and the letters in my surname all run together, but overall it’s pretty legible.
I hate trying to identify a signatory whose John Hancock is nothing but a vague scrawl, all over the place, and not even close to representing their name.
At the other end of the scale are the people whose signature is nothing but their first name and their last name, in the *exact same * handwriting they use for everything else. I guess in some ways these are the most difficult to forge, and obviously the most easily identifiable, but for some reason it still cracks me up when someone signs something and writes their name underneath it, and the two lines are indistinguishable from each other.
So tell me about your signature, why you sign it that way, and how you feel generally about how other people choose to sign their name.
Strangely, my signature is really neat and pretty, which is weird, since my handwriting is horrible the rest of the time. My last name ends in “ty”, so I take the end of the Y up and make a little star, then I make the end of the star long enough to cross the T. I have no idea why I do this or where the star came from, but I’ve been doing it for so long it’s automatic.
Oh, and I don’t put a space between my first and last name, although I do capitalise both. I write it all with one stroke.
My signature is my name, first and last, written in my standard cursive handwriting. It’s been that way since about third grade, when I was told that “signature” meant “writing your name”. By the time I learned that it ought to be somehow unique, I’d already established the cursive-first-last as my “official signature”, both in my mind and on various documents. So, for better or worse, that’s how it’ll be for the rest of my life. (Except on my driver’s license, for which they made me sign a piece of plastic with a stylus, which I hate doing, and so my first name [Ian] as written on my license appears to read “Clam”.)
On the plus side, it’s at least legible, and my “Signature” and “Name” blanks don’t match because I fill out the “Name” blank in print.
I sign with my first name, middle initial, and last name. Looks vaguely more adult that way. My last name ends with “ter,” so I usually sweep the end of the r over and cross the t with it. I noticed after I started doing that my father does the same thing. In fact, our handwriting is rather similar except that his is shakier. Sometimes I just end my last name with a vague scribble, because it seems like lately all I do is sign my name to things. I get tired of doing it. My signature is all rounded and loopy but small. I print everything else I have to write.
Mine is totally stylized, and isn’t at all recognizable as having anything to do with my actual name. Well, you can probably tell that my first name starts with a “J,” and maybe make a lucky guess that my last name starts with a “W,” but beyond that … heh.
You know that claim that medical students actually practice illegible “doctor signatures”? It’s true. At least some of the time. One of my classmates developed a signature that resembled an Arabic calligraphic Xmas tree. Mine looks more like a kinky Slinky. Probably the first letter is decipherable, the rest a scribble.
As for my normal handwriting…
It’s quite legible! I met a pharmacist once who exclaimed, “I know you! You’re the one I can read!”
Mine is pretty boring. First and last name both in cursive with the exception of the “Z” that begins my last name. I have had the same name for 26+ years and I still don’t know how to make a cursive Z. I print everything else so I am not too concerned.
I have a very long last name, and often blanks left for signatures are very short, so my signature telescopes. I hit the ascenders and descenders and in between it’s just wiggles, so I can expand or contract it to fit the size of the blank. In a long blank it looks a bit like this:
Sch___k__pf_ff__h____n [sup]*[/sup]
and in a short blank it looks more like this:
S-h_k_pf_h_n.
I have a tendency to write all the letters of my first name, which is quite short, more or less on top of each other.
[sup]*[/sup] No, my last name is not Schnackenpfefferhausen. That’s just an example. Neither is my first name F-R-I-T-Z, even though that is short.
My signature is mostly illegible. You can probably guess that my first name is Jennifer, and it’s clear that the middle initial is an “M,” but good luck trying to figure out my last name … or even the first letter of my last name!
My initials, however, I think are much clearer – but people profess to be baffled by them as well.
My last name consists of basically all vertical loops, so sometimes I get carried away and end up misspelling my own name.
I take the time to make my lowercase R with the left side higher up than the right side so that the crossbar slants, and also I make the little loop on the left side of the lowercase R.
When I write my signature neatly, it resembles my mother’s (I forged her signature on a field trip permission slip once because I had forgotten to have her sign it; she knew about the trip and was going to let me go). When I write my signature messily, it resembles my father’s. My mom’s and dad’s handwriting look nothing alike, so I’m weird that way.
My signature is “Yes, I know it’s just a story. :rolleyes:” It’s because I enjoy posting about fiction, but I got tired of the people who say “Dude, it’s just a book.” or some such stuff. Anyway, my real purpose in posting here is that I can not see it. I was wonder\ing if that is just me, or is it not coming up. Anyone care to help?
Are you clicking on “Show Your Signature”? It’s off by default.
As for my written signature, it now pretty much reads JAva. I have a long last name that was a pain in the ass to write out. My previous signatures were just my name written in my normal handwriting. Now it’s my first and middle initial, followed by the first two letters of the first part of my last name, finished off with a long line and a dot in the appropriate place. Easy enough to forge, I suppose, but woe to the person who would actually want to.
Back when I was still doing engineering drawings, we were required to sign initial(s) then last name. My penmanship is marginal at best. The poor drafters who had to transcribe my scratchings for the final CAD version mistakenly translated it as M. Roberts rather than M. R. West.
When I write out my full name, it’s usually more legible.
No, M. R. Ducks.
Ok, sorry about that…I’m tired, and fighting a cold, and had a mid-term on Monday, and got broken up with on Tuesday, and … and … I just found the “MR Ducks” thing funny
Mine is “M-loopidyloopidy-dy LOOPIDYLOOPIDYLOOPIDY-SLASH!” All leaning over at a slant of roughly 140 degrees.
It used to be completely legible joined-up printing, with a cute little swirl on the initial M of my first name… Then I discovered I could write my whole name in loopidys.
The light bulb went ding! Never looked back.
My usual writing is very small and semi-legible unless I know other people are going to be reading it – then it becomes legible to the extreme.
Side story:
Several years after I developed my final .sig, my elementary school brother and his friend asked me to sign my name so they could try to forge it, I smirked at them. Then I signed my name on a bit of paper and told them to knock themselves out. Their expressions were priceless. They had just learned cursive, and were still in the very-careful-printing-cursive stage of writing, you see. Didn’t help either that I had learned a completely different method of handwriting, which became extremely unique over the years.
