ASTM E2290
Definition
ASTM International standard guide for examination of handwritten items; lists the 21 discriminating elements that the examiner reports on.
- Full title
- Standard guide for examination of handwritten items
- Discriminating elements
- 21 listed elements
- Issuing committee
- ASTM Committee E30, Forensic Sciences
- Field
- Questioned document examination
Common questions
What kind of features do the 21 discriminating elements in E2290 cover?+
They span both form-based features, such as letter shape and slant, and habitual features, such as pen pressure patterns, connecting strokes, and spacing, giving examiners a consistent checklist to compare across a questioned document and known writing samples.
Is E2290 a scoring system that produces a numeric match result?+
No. It is a guide listing the categories an examiner should consider and document, not a quantitative scoring protocol, so the conclusion remains an examiner's opinion built on a documented, standardised set of observations rather than an automated score.
Related terms
- Baseline
- The imaginary line on which letters rest; can be straight, ascending, descending, convex, concave or undulating.
- Class Characteristic
- A feature shared by an entire group of objects (every shoe of one model has the same sole tread; every tire of...
- Exemplar (Standard)
- Authentic specimen writing of the suspect used for comparison. Two classes: request (taken under examiner control) and collected (pre-existing genuine writings).
- Handwriting
- A neuromuscular act in which graphic forms are produced on a surface; the product of motor memory built up through years of...
- Individual Characteristic
- A characteristic unique to a specific typewriter unit arising from manufacturing variation or service wear; used to identify or eliminate a specific...
- Line Quality
- The overall fluency, rhythm and pressure variation of a stroke. Genuine writing has smooth, rhythmic, pressure-modulated lines; forgeries show tremor, blunt starts...
- Pen Lift and Hiatus
- Pen lift is a deliberate stop and re-start within or between letters; hiatus is a gap left in a stroke that should...
- Ratio
- Proportional relationship between the heights of small letters, capitals and ascenders/descenders.
- Retrace
- Re-tracing of a stroke back over its original path, common in letters like d, t and lower-loop closures.
- Slant
- Angle of letters relative to the baseline (right-slant, vertical, left-slant). A habit-driven class plus individual feature.