A Close Look at the Significance of Margin Drift:What Does It Really Tell Us?

Many times the Forensic Document Examiner (FDE) is called upon to examine documents where there are multiple signatures of one individual. The question put forth to us as experts is, “Were these signatures executed at one sitting or were these signatures written on different occasions?” In order to answer this question, an FDE may look at a phenomenon called “margin drift” and use this as a factor in arriving at their conclusion. The critical problem that arises for the FDE is: How much weight do we give to this phenomenon? Moreover, can margin drift be a significant factor in indicating that a group of signatures were written during one sitting? This is the problem put forth in this paper.