1. ANSI/ASB Standard 011: Scope of Expertise & Professional Standards
- Scope & Purpose: Governs the broad responsibilities, general qualifications, and tasks of forensic document examiners (FDEs) in evaluating questioned handwriting, machine-printed documents, inks, paper, alterations, and physical document integrity.
- Explicit Graphology Exclusion: Explicitly excludes handwriting analysis for personality assessment, character judgment, or profile creation—declaring that graphology is not a foundation or supplement for professional competence.
- Training & Qualification Mandates: Requires a structured, workplace-supervised apprenticeship of at least 4,000 hours (completed within 2 to 4 years). This standard applies to those examiners trainer after 2021.
- Required Standard Equipment: Mandates that specific equipment shall be available at all times, including variable light sources (transmitted, side/oblique, vertical incident), optical magnification (stereomicroscopes), digital archiving systems, rulers/grids, long- and short-wave UV sources, color filters, infrared (IR) reflection/luminescence systems, and an Electrostatic Detection Device (EDD).
- Normative Ethical Codes (Annex A & Annex B): Establishes mandatory ethical obligations requiring practitioners to use the scientific method, maintain contemporaneous and auditable case records for independent review, base opinions strictly on sufficient data, defensively handle evidence, and disclose known limitations.
2. ANSI/ASB Standard 070: Examination of Handwritten Items
- Hypothesis-Driven Methodology: Grounded in objective scientific testing, recommending that examiners structure evaluations around mutually exclusive competing hypotheses (e.g., written by known writer vs. written by an alternative writer vs. written by known writer in a disguised manner).
- Questioned Writing Procedure: Evaluates writing type, internal consistency, complexity, speed indicators (tapered strokes and fluid motion vs. lifts, hesitations, and unvaried pressure), distortion, simulation, and tracing.
- Reproduction & Copy Limitations: Prefers original documents. If non-originals are submitted, the examiner must assess whether clarity is sufficient; if clarity is lacking, the examiner shall discontinue procedures and report accordingly. It explicitly cautions that non-originals mask pen pressure, stroke direction, fine line quality, indentations, and cut-and-paste artifacts.
- Known Writing & Baseline Rules: Requires screening known samples for internal consistency; unresolved inconsistencies suggest multiple writers and require contacting the submitter or discontinuing procedures for that group. It notes that stakeholder-selected specimens may not reflect a writer’s full range of natural variation.
- Comparison & Dissimilarities: Requires side-by-side microscopic comparison and physical/digital overlay analysis when tracing is suspected. Defines a dissimilarity as a feature absent across all known specimens—noting that if a feature appears in even one known sample, it is within the writer’s repertoire and cannot be classified as a dissimilarity.
- While ANSI/ASB Standard 070 lacks a standalone section titled “Conformance Requirements,” and its lack of normative sections.
3. ANSI/ASB Standard 035: Examination of Documents for Alterations
- Scope & Alteration Types: Establishes required procedures to detect modifications made by physical, chemical, mechanical, or electronic means, categorized as additions, deletions, erasures, obliterations, page substitutions, or overwritings.
- Non-Destructive Testing Sequence: Mandates that all non-destructive optical, microscopic, side-lighting, transmitted light, UV, IRR, IRL, and EDD examinations must be exhausted before any destructive testing is considered.
- Destructive Testing Protocols: Prior to applying destructive methods (such as solvents or physical scraping), the examiner must obtain written permission from the requesting party, take photographs before and after, test solvents on non-casework scrap materials first, and preserve removed trace materials separately.
- Digital Metadata & Hardware Variations: Mandates permanently recording image capture conditions (resolution, color space, and bit depth) when scanning evidence. It also requires reports to address whether apparent alterations could simply be the result of normal printer, software, or hardware variations during legitimate document creation.
4. SWGDOC Standard Terminology for Expressing Conclusions
- Standardized 9-Point Scale: Establishes a standard confidence scale for expressing degrees of certainty: Identification (definite), Strong Probability, Probable, Indications, No Conclusion (zero point), Indications Did Not, Probably Did Not, Strong Probability Did Not, and Elimination.
- Deprecated & Discouraged Expressions: Strictly deprecates ambiguous or misleading expressions, including “possible / could have”, “consistent with” (when comparing known to questioned handwriting), “could not be identified”, “positive identification”, “no identification”, and “reason to believe”.
5. SWGDOC Standard for Minimum Training Requirements
- Candidate Prerequisites: Requires an earned baccalaureate degree from an accredited institution and 24 months of supervised training.
- Trainer Qualifications: Requires the principal trainer to have completed a calss or seminar in instructor development.
- Training Program Duration: Mandates a formal program equivalent to at least 24 months of full-time training (not to exceed 4 years) under direct supervision, maintaining auditable training logs covering 20 core syllabus modules ranging from handwriting motor control to equipment, paper chemistry, printing technologies, and expert witness mock trials.
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