The Image of one's Signature

[LadyCrimson]

 

I always peter out at the end of a name...turns into a line or a big looping crossover.

[Krookie]

I really, really hope you don't sign your personal checks and stuff "Lady Crimson"

[LadyCrimson]

I'm crazy, but not quite that crazy.

[Krookie]

Psycho!

[tarna]

Tell your dad that I recommend he try an enema to help him get over himself. A signature does not need to conform to the conventional rules as it is an analogy to a fingerprint. I had a buddy at one time who's last name was Mountain. His sig was written Mt. His first name was Cliff. Believe it or not his dad's name was Rocky. Obviously the family had a pretty good sense of humour. :D

[Colrom]

A signature is not just a mark like a fingerprint it is also an artistic creation like a drawing.

 

You could use a hanko - but if you used one in the west that would be considered strange by most and obnoxious by some.

 

hanko - a seal The seal has the legal force of a signature in Japan. In fact, it is even said to have an occult force that can influence success in business and family life. For these reasons as well as aesthetic ones, people spend considerable sums on hand-carved seals made of boxwood, ivory or crystal, especially for the jitsuin, or registered seal used in important business transactions. For receiving packages or writing receipts, the mitomein, or ordinary seal, is sufficient.

[mkreku]

I just use my normal handwriting when I write my signature. Of course, it helps that my handwriting is so ugly that it looks like someone just scribbled a normal, illegible signature..

[Colrom]

Someone having trouble getting into the mood for a signature needs to put on their Tevia clothes and boots and sing a rendition of: Tradition, Tradition, dum, dum, Tradition - from "Fiddler on the Roof".

[metadigital]

I had a short but angry discussion with my father about my handwritten signature. He said it was a worthless signature and asked when i would finally get a 'decent' signature. I replied that this was my signature and i wasn't going the change it, as there was nothing wrong with it. He proceeded to say i was a self-absorbed fool who knew nothing about the world, that my signature was childish and that people would think less of me because of it. I told him he was being silly, upon which he basically said that with my attitude i would have serious trouble living in the 'real' world.

 

If your wondering, my signature is just my last name written as I would normally do it without a capital letter.

 

So i was wondering is he alone in his opinion, because I can't really see much merit in his reaction or his arguments. But i'm not the kind of person to just trust in what to me feels obvious and reasonable, so i wanted to get some feedback.

 

qwb,

 

PS I truly am a somewhat passive and self-absorbed person of him, so i suppose this maybe part of some long running frustation with those aspects of me.

It doesn't matter, as long as you write it (pretty much) the same every time so it's recognizably 'yours.' People who like their sigs to be a certain way are just being...ah...old school or something.

 

My father, since he was disabled, wrote his signature with a pen in his mouth and used only his first and last initials, since the whole name was too much effort. No one cared, including banks and such. A sig is a sig.

 

My sig has become more and more sloppy as time goes on; after endless check-writing, it gets tedious making it pretty, so I take my cue from doctors; unlegible scribbles are cool.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Last time I changed my signature (before I was a teenager) I had trouble with a bank not liking that I had used a different one to their records. I had to go through a complex process to change their records to my new signature (the old one was just my name written out, like yours, btw).

 

Banks keep a record of it, so that they can control access to your account (in Britain the banks keep a scanned image on file to compare if you are not at your home branch).

 

The legal requirement for company documents, FWIIW, is just that there is some actual ink from a pen on the paper ANYWHERE: e.g. the large multinational pharma company I worked for had to get all the directors to sign-off on various government stipulations: the IT infrastructure could send the documents anywhere in the world instantaneously, but the US government still required some ink as proof, regardless of what the actual signature looked like (in comparison to what they expected).

 

That was before the electronic signature was accepted, though. Now, it is possible to use a registered asynchronous digital cipher to confirm that an individual authoured a block of text, as well as to confirm that the text hasn't been altered, AND that only a person with the decipher key can read it.

[Walsingham]

Interesting topic, butterfly. I also had a simple signature, reasoning quite correctly that no-one was qualified to check it in the first place, so I wanted something I could reliably reproduce rather than fall over.

 

I think it does say something about you if you have a simple straightforward signature. It says you are simple and straightforward, which I would say is something I like to see.

 

Be yourself.

 

EDIT: I've since become a shifty old bastard, so I had to revise my signature.

[metadigital]

*tries to imagine a shifty old signature*

[Nartwak]

Don't forget bastardly.

[metadigital]

* thinks: I guess I could just look in a mirror ))shudders(( *

[Musopticon?]

Thanks to this thread, I've just began to write my surname as two letters and then a long scribbly line.

[Atreides]

I'm not saying that this is crucially important or anything, but I think that there are some important criteria in settling on a signature:

 

1)  Professonal appearance.  It should look like it was written by an adult who takes him/herself reasonably seriously.

2)  Consistency.  It should look pretty much the same all the time.  Banks and the like do check signatures to verify documents.

3)  Distinctiveness.  You and people who know you should be able to recognize it.

4) Speed.  You should be able to write it in 3 seconds or less.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think the first two reasons are good ones. Especially if you're in a position of power eventually.

[metadigital]

I am toying with redesigning my signature ... a nice change after years of croupier-damage compounding the hurry-up-and-sign-the-document pressure ... after all I'll be (even moreso) v. important so I will need an intimidating signature.

[Rosbjerg]

I think it's somewhat important .. as is handwriting, if nothing else it's like playing a guitar - it may not be useful for anything, but to impress the other sex! ^_^