Where the tracing is made directly with pen and ink over a transparency, as is often done, no rubbing is necessary, and of course the phenomena from rubbering do not appear.

Where signatures or other writings have been forged by previously making a study and practice of the writing to be copied until it has been to a greater or less degree idealized, the hand must be trained to its imitation so that it can be written with a more or less approximation as to form and with natural freedom.

Forgeries thus made by skilful imitators are the most difficult of detection, as the internal evidence of forgery by tracing is mostly absent.  The evidence of free-hand forgery is chiefly in the greater liability of the forger to inject into the writing his own unconscious habit, and to fail to reproduce with sufficient accuracy that of the original writing, so that when subjected to rigid analysis and microscopic inspection, the spuriousness is made manifest and demonstrable.  Specific attention should be given to any hesitancy in form or movement, manifest in angularity or change of direction of lines, changed relations and proportions of letters, slant of the writing, its mechanical arrangement, disconnected lines, retouched shades, etc.

Photographs, greatly enlarged, of both the signatures in question and the exemplars placed side by side for comparison will greatly aid in making plain any evidences of forgery by tracing.

It sometimes occurs that the forger, fearful that his attempt to imitate another’s writing would be too easily detected if made with a free hand, sketches in pencil the characters he intends to make in ink on the document, or traces them by means of blackened paper at the appropriate place.  The evidences of this are very likely to appear when the document is examined in transmitted light.

It is often asserted in trials that tracings of a genuine signature invariably show hesitation and painting.  This is not always the fact.  Tracings proven and subsequently admitted to have been such have shown an apparent absence of all constraint, and a careful examination of the result revealed no pause of the pen.  But, on the other hand, these freely written tracings have invariably shown either a deviation from some habitual practice of the writer, or, if the model was followed with skill, two or three such tracings, when photographed on a transparent film and superposed, have shown such exact resemblances as to proclaim their character at once.

The natural tendency of man is to introduce some elements of symbolism in what he is attempting to trace and to seek some sort of geometrical symmetry in what he designs.  Wherever he is not restricted by certain forms which he must introduce, and which may render a balance of parts about a median line unattainable, he tends to evolve symmetrical designs, as in the highest and simplest forms of ancient architecture.  When the parts of the design are prescribed, as in