Frequency of Signature Styles in San Diego County

Signatures may be classified into 3 basic structural types: text-based (each allograph can be read clearly), mixed (at least 2 allographs are legible), and stylized (1 or no allograph is legible). The relative frequency of these signature types in the San Diego (USA) population was determined by sampling 1,500 signatures from Juror Summons forms. Of interest to this study were the relationships between type of signature, gender, and ethnicity. This survey disclosed that females more commonly wrote text-based signatures than mixed or stylized types, whereas males more commonly wrote in a mixed or stylized form than in a text-based form. The difference between the genders with respect to the extent of signature stylisation was highly significant (Chi-square = 138.1, p < 0.0005). No remarkable differences were found between the frequencies of the 3 signature types in the Hispanic versus the non-Hispanic populations of signers. When the signature types within each of the ethnic groups were compared according to gender, no differences were found between the Hispanic and non-Hispanic males, and only a small (questionable) difference was found between the Hispanic and non-Hispanic female writers.