professional expert places his reliance.

Hence, when we read of "experts" being mistaken, or of an equal number
of them appearing on opposite sides of the same case, it will nearly
always be found upon investigation that they are of the class
described above, whose lack of thorough special training and
specialized experience really should have disqualified them from
giving testimony. Though any one may call himself an "expert," or a
"professional expert," for that matter, thus opening the door to
charlatanism in exactly the same manner that it is opened more or less
in all vocations, yet, as a matter of fact, it is very rare that
professional handwriting experts testify to a contrary state of facts,
and the cases in which they have been proven mistaken are remarkably
few.

Experts who have a natural aptitude coupled with experience that
produces skill are able, by a system which they have reduced to a
science, to detect the spurious from the genuine handwriting with
almost unvarying success. But their conclusions are not reached by
second sight or sleight-of-hand methods, but rather by painstaking,
scientific investigation.

Some of the principal tests applied to determine the genuineness of
handwriting are these: The actual and relative slant of the letters or
the angles between their stems and the base; the constancy and
accuracy with which a straight line is followed as a base; the amount
of pressure used on the pen and the part of the stroke where it is
applied, and the positions of the line as a whole relative to the
edges of the paper. The simplest punctuation mark under the microscope
has its own individuality. It would be difficult to find two writers