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standard texts of traditional handwriting identification.^67 Among
the methods tested and reported in prior work was forensic
stylistics as described in McMenamin.^68 McMenamin’s is the
only text that describes the method and the categories of
“stylemarkers,” which are claimed to identify each person’s
unique writing style. As actually practiced in the reports by
Professors McMenamin, Shuy, Leonard, Coulthard, Grant, and
a few other nonlinguists I have reviewed, the method consists of
two steps:
- Select stylemarkers by reading the questioned (“Q”)
and known (“K”) documents; - Decide the authorship of the questioned document(s)
based on the stylemarkers by listing similarities
and/or differences and deciding which similarities and
which differences are important or not.
The method offers:
i. no protocol for the order of reading Q or K first, or
back and forth between Q and K,
ii. no protocol for internal consistency testing of K or Q
documents, so that any number of Q documents can
be put together, in violation of a standard forensic
science principle of noncontamination;
iii. no protocol for determining the importance or
“significance” of stylemarkers,
iv. no use of statistical analysis (in actual case reports);
and
v. no standard reference set of stylemarkers to be
reviewed in each case.
(^67) Id. at 113–20 (reviewing the use of linguistic features by handwriting
examiners in ALBERT S. OSBORN (1910)); see, e.g., JAMES V. P. CONWAY,
EVIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS (1959); WILSON R. HARRISON, SUSPECT
DOCUMENTS: THEIR SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION (1958); ORDWAY HILTON,
SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION OF QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS (rev ed. 1982);
ALBERT S. OSBORN, THE PROBLEM OF PROOF (1926); ALBERT S. OSBORN,
QUESTIONED DOCUMENTS (2d ed. 1929); see also MCMENAMIN, ADVANCES,
supra note 64, at 81–82 (attempting to distinguish the two fields of
questioned document examination and forensic stylistics).
(^68) See MCMENAMIN, supra note 2.