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28 RIZAL BEYOND THE GRAVEextended in their connection strokes thus making the signatureproportionately extended. Hagan, an expert in handwriting, putsit more strikingly in this quotation 17 :...........and still another characteristic of forged signaturesthat are not traced frorn a genuine signature is thatthey are written with greater length m proportion to thewidth and height of the letters than occurs in the germinesignatures from which they are copied in imitation. Thiswant of proportion occurs generally from making the dinesconnecting the letters of the signatures longer than thoseof the copy."It is also to be noted that the ratio obtained when we computedthe length in proportion to capital letters and long letters wasnot very much different from the standard value. This is explainedagain by the fact that the simulator's eyes could easily detectthe want of proportion in the case of those letters since they werebig in size proportionally but not so when the letters were quitesmall, as was evident from our figures. That the "z" of the retractionwas longer in proportion than those of the other threesignatures is explained by the fact that it was written out in full,which was not found even i the formal letter of Rizal to Andrade,his defender.7. That the five signatures should agree in shading the downstrokefinish of the "R" in "Rizal" as is evident in the illustration,while the corresponding part in the retraction signature (No. 3)is left unshaded, despite the heavy shading in other parts thatwere overemphasized, is another point that sustains the conclusionthat the retraction signature was not germine. Thisdiscrepancy is an evidence that the habits of writing these signatureswere not the same. While the five signatures were writtenby the same habit of shading, the retraction signature was writtenby another habit, although it simulated and even overemphasizedthe other manifestations of shading.The points of differences between the standard signaturestogether, on one hand, and the signatures of the retraction, on theother, are not just differences. The (1) perception of unnaturalstops in the retraction but absent in the genuine signatures, (2)the presence of elaborate attempt in the, writing of letters in theretraction and also the elaborate writing out fully of the "z" unlike17 T eatise on Disputed Handwriting, p. 92.