Your signature

If it's one of those stupid touch pads? I draw shapes. Usually a square or a triangle. Want my signature? Give me a piece of paper; I brought my own pen.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
If it's one of those stupid touch pads? I draw shapes. Usually a square or a triangle. Want my signature? Give me a piece of paper; I brought my own pen.
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or use an actual pen on the device. (or a sharpie)
 
Bob Noel said:
or use an actual pen on the device. (or a sharpie)
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Looks like you aren't the only one having difficulties with using a finger on those tiny USPS tablet signature boxes.
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The local historical society advertises for retirees (mostly) to volunteer to transcribe various written historical documents into type. The thinking is that there is only a generation or two left that is still able to read cursive.
 
What….AI can’t decode cursive?
 
"Sign your full name" or any derivative thereof doesn't make sense to me. The purpose of a signature is to acknowledge instruction or to attest to some sort of agreement. If it were ever to come in to question as to the validity of that signature, they're either going to have to ask me if it's my signature or compare to other signatures I've made. So, if you instruct me to do something different from my normal, I could contest later that the contract is void. "That doesn't look like my signature!" There'd be nothing else available to argue that.

The Coast Guard finally caught up to e-signatures not too long ago. Thanks to the likes of Adobe it's really easy. Add to that, we have security certificates on our ID cards that are used to verify validity if it were ever to come into question. Some of us are really fancy and add an image of our normal ink signature to the e-sign block. However, some documents (typically forms that begin in DD) require us to print, sign, scan, and send back in a new email. :rolleyes:
 
There was a crime novel a little while back. I think it was one of the Stone Barrington series. In it, Stone was able to do some good for a young actress because the bad guy forged the actress's autograph, which she had carefully made sure looked nothing like her signature. I thought that was pretty cool.

My signature is not my full first, middle, last in cursive unless forced to do so...(Thanks Federal Government).

Back in the old days when Radio Shack, et al. used to want mailing addresses and names for every purchase, I would use my kids' names to know who they were selling the mailing list to. Strangely, Radio Shack didn't, Harbor Freight on the other hand....
 
GaryM said:
The local historical society advertises for retirees (mostly) to volunteer to transcribe various written historical documents into type. The thinking is that there is only a generation or two left that is still able to read cursive.
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There’s a woodworking guru who wanted parts of an old (1500’s, IIRC) German text translated, and struggled to find someone who could actually read the guy’s handwriting.
 
MauleSkinner said:
There’s a woodworking guru who wanted parts of an old (1500’s, IIRC) German text translated, and struggled to find someone who could actually read the guy’s handwriting.
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Similar problem exists with older German typeface. They used the 'Fractur' typeface for centuries, the transition to the Roman typeface wasn't complete until after the mid-1900's.

I can read German moderately well in Roman type, can't decipher Fractur at all.

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GaryM said:
The local historical society advertises for retirees (mostly) to volunteer to transcribe various written historical documents into type. The thinking is that there is only a generation or two left that is still able to read cursive.
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The National Archives is always looking for people able to transcribe cursive:

www.archives.gov

Citizen Archivist Missions

Citizen Archivist Missions Ready to start tagging and transcribing? We've curated these topical missions to help you jump in and contribute! Click on a topic that interests you, and it will bring you right to those historical records in our Catalog. Tagging and transcribing makes these records...
www.archives.gov www.archives.gov

I signed up and took a look at some of the documents and noped out of there. Not everyone back in the 1800’s that could write, could write legibly.

My signature used to be readable, then one year my boss (small, privately owned company) wanted the employees to sign Christmas cards being sent to our dealers and customers. I think we had close to 400-500 cards to sign over two or three days. Ever since, my signature is just a wiggly line. Someone tried reading it once and commented on it, I said, “I can repeat it every time and nobody else can fake it.”
 
GaryM said:
The thinking is that there is only a generation or two left that is still able to read cursive.
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I remember seeing some news report a while back that a school district was bringing it back in their elementary schools. Don't remember where, just remember they said it was happening.
 
Shawn said:
Mine is an illegible scribble. Feel like they they really have little meaning anymore.

Heard a great story about how thousands of mail in ballots in my County were rejected due to inability to match and verify signatures and a vast majority was from the younger generation who has had zero emphasis on maintaining a physical signature in this digital age.
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At my polling place in PA there was a book that had my name, address and a copy of my signature. I had to sign that book and they could compare the signatures (if they wanted to).

My signature will vary depending (as a southpaw) on the angle I put the paper at.
 
GaryM said:
The local historical society advertises for retirees (mostly) to volunteer to transcribe various written historical documents into type. The thinking is that there is only a generation or two left that is still able to read cursive.
Click to expand...
Reading cursive is not hard. Its usually the penmanship that is the difference. My cursive is acceptable. Vietnamese still learn cursive and my wife's penmanship is exquisite. My sons is horrible only becuase he's been in American schools for the last few years and even though we are in (what I am told) is 'the best school district' they school is laughably bad compared to his Vietnamese school. At 5th grade in Vn he was already doing 8th grade math.

Do not get me started on how craptastic US schools are and how bad many school administrators are.
 
I was very disappointed when I learned cursive. You see, my father had a secretary who could write in this special way as fast as he could speak. I thought that when they were teaching us cursive, they were teaching us shorthand. Never did learn shorthand and reverted to my father's style of writing in all caps when handwriting things. When my mother asked my sixth-grade teacher what she should do about my illegible handwriting, the teacher told her to get me a typewriter. She did. I was also forced to take typing in summer school after the eighth grade. This was back when only girls on a secretarial track took typing. Little did I or my mother know that in a few short years, being able to type 60 wpm was going to be very handy to me with computers.

My employees were amazed once when they were trying to figure out how to turn some document into a machine readable format and I said, oh hell, give it to me. I propped it up next to the monitor and blasted through it in a few minutes.
 
learning to type was not difficult, remembering all the formatting and all the tabs and how to do indentation using the sliders on the typewriter was the hardest part.
 
flyingron said:
I was very disappointed when I learned cursive. You see, my father had a secretary who could write in this special way as fast as he could speak. I thought that when they were teaching us cursive, they were teaching us shorthand. Never did learn shorthand and reverted to my father's style of writing in all caps when handwriting things. When my mother asked my sixth-grade teacher what she should do about my illegible handwriting, the teacher told her to get me a typewriter. She did. I was also forced to take typing in summer school after the eighth grade. This was back when only girls on a secretarial track took typing. Little did I or my mother know that in a few short years, being able to type 60 wpm was going to be very handy to me with computers.
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Similar story.

I learned cursive in elementary school, but my handwriting was always atrocious. Around 6th or 7th grade, when things like book reports and essays began to be required, my mom began typing them for me. When I hit high school, she made certain I was enrolled for a typing class in my first semester, and for Christmas she gave me an Underwood portable machine and from then on I was on my own.

flyingron said:
My employees were amazed once when they were trying to figure out how to turn some document into a machine readable format and I said, oh hell, give it to me. I propped it up next to the monitor and blasted through it in a few minutes.
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In my first few months on the job right after college, my boss and I were doing something on a terminal (still using mainframes; PCs were just coming onto the market). After a few painful minutes of watching him slowly hunt & peck, I asked to take over the keyboard. I promptly zipped through whatever it was we were entering, and he asked, "Uh, how fast do you type, anyway?" "About 45 wpm," but soon I realized my mistake when I became his primary data entry person.
 
Half Fast said:
In my first few months on the job right after college, my boss and I were doing something on a terminal (still using mainframes; PCs were just coming onto the market). After a few painful minutes of watching him slowly hunt & peck, I asked to take over the keyboard. I promptly zipped through whatever it was we were entering, and he asked, "Uh, how fast do you type, anyway?"
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Done that a few times, usually my comment is "Let me drive." My boss's boss on one job was quite a two finger hunt and pecker. We modified the terminal mode display (UNIX stty program) when he was logged in to add "two-finger mode" to the list.
 
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