I thought I'd have a little go at collating some of the handwriting and signature samples, as it gets a little difficult sometimes flicking back and forth between them, and even more so when trying to refer them to others.
For starters, then, here are all nine verified copies of Roy Moore's signature that I've seen:
I'm going to break them down and compare them with the signature from the yearbook, but first I thought it might be interesting to look at this document, which has, along with a signature, Roy Moore printing his name twice:
The reason I find this interesting is that defenders of Moore who believe that the yearbook signature is fake like to point to the slight differences between it and the verified signatures. And yet, here within the same document, presumably written at the same time, there are just as many differences in the two printed versions of his name as in any of the signatures - particularly: one has no middle initial, the "e" is totally different; one "R" has a much bigger loop; one "M" has the first stroke 'doubled'; and so forth.
For those who suspect forgery, differences like these may appear convincing enough to believe these two examples were written by different people. For others, the similarities and Occam's Razor are perhaps more telling.
Here are the nine verified signatures of Roy Moore's first name (and middle initial), with the signature from the yearbook in the centre:
While this isn't a handwriting analysis, there are perhaps a few things I can point out:
- The yearbook signature is the only one that doesn't contain the middle initial
- The yearbook signature looks a little like "Ray", as does #9
- It looks to me like there are similarities and differences across all the signatures, to the extent that no particular variation stands out as being either 'suspect' or 'correct', save the lack of middle initial in the yearbook signature (which, if anything, would throw doubt on the forgery claim)
Likewise with the surname:
- Some have an extra flourish on the "M" (2,4,5,7,8) and some don't
- It was claimed above that the yearbook signature and the divorce signature (#5) are the only ones where "the second "o" is larger than the first AND both o's are slanted right". This doesn't appear to be the case. Firstly, the second "o" is actually smaller in both those examples, and not noticeably slanted to the right. Across all ten signatures there is a great variety in the "o's" - but none that stands out in any as being particularly odd.
- It was also stated that the gap betwen the "r" and the "e" is larger than in others. That does appear to be the case. It may, however, be possible to find many instances where any two signatures have only one or two things in common. The first yearbook "o", for example, doesn't join up, as in #3 and #6, while the 'divorce' "o" does. Only #3 and the yearbook "M" have a 'loop' in the centre, while the second arch of the "M" is only 'pointed' in 3, 4, 9, and the yearbook. And so forth.
- The similarities across all signatures appear to be far more convincing than the differences.
The other interesting thing about the furore around the Nelson yearbook is how much focus has been put on the signature,
the ink color, and the writing that follows "Moore" (which seems very clearly to be in a different hand; I would be surprised if anyone was claiming it wasn't) while little appears to be being said about the inscription itself.
I posted earlier in the thread a few examples of Moore's handwriting - one taken from a book signing in 2009, and the other from a copy of the US constitution Moore signed for Alabama judge Bob Vance in 2002, and I thought it would be interesting to compare letters and words. I've tried not to be biased in this, and rather than select obvious matches, simply select all instances of a letter or word, and let the results speak for themselves.
The comparions are mostly between the yearbook and the constitution, though the first one has samples from the signed biography, as well as a date taken from signature #6:
The "b", the "f", and the "l" are not so great in the next one, as they are in different places in the word in each sample - but some may see them as illuminating, nonetheless:
The word "more" in the yearbook is interesting, given its similarity to "Moore":
This is every instance of a lower case letter beginning a word across all three samples:
The last thing I could find to look at was the dot in the letter "i", which was often some distance to the right:
That's all.