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Comment by maxbond | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a ritual meant to convey that you intend to enter into a legally binding arrangement with someone, one of the requirements of a contract (eg, to establish that you aren't joking or being figurative about your agreement). I think the possibility of forensically analyzing it to prove your identity is secondary, if it's a consideration at all. Indeed, I've "signed" documents digitally where the software used a "signature" that was just a font, totally divorced from my handwriting & of no forensic value.

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It's so that you can be asked "Did you sign this?" and you would be lying if you said no. And so that if someone else signs it in your name they are leaving evidence of fraud.

If someone else signs for you and you say it WAS you, I don't think the signature is going to be disputed. You can always say you just decided to sign it weird for some reason. In the opposite case, the forger is going to need to argue that you signed it weird, while you are going to say that you didn't sign it at all.

But that's how I think things are supposed to be.

I live in a strange country where signatures actually are compared by clerks and will literally reject your second signature if it doesn't look enough like the first, even when you signed both right in front of them.

Exactly. That’s why as an added layer of security signatures are witnessed.

Then they ask “did you sign this?” and the witness “did they sign this?”

It’s less an immediate authentication and more of a “record” of authentication that has to be validated by the person who signed.

> It's so that you can be asked "Did you sign this?" and you would be lying if you said no.

If you agreed to something verbally, and are then asked "did you agree to this?", you would also be lying if you answered with "no".

There’s usually no record of verbal “agreements”, and casual language is much more ambiguous than signing a document that literally says “I agree”.

Indeed: most laws governing mutual obligations accept verbal contracts just like any other contract.

Having them written down helps with disputes.

Signatures can be witnessed. For important documents, e.g. deeds, that is even a legal requirement (your jurisdiction may vary).

Even more universally, weddings.

Though they also serve there as witnesses that the person signing is indeed the actual person supposed to be wed :)

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