Attributing the Well-Wishers

Forensic Signature Examination of the Circulating Office Farewell Card

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement reports an examiner-grade forensic attribution of 1,438 signed inscriptions across 61 workplace farewell cards, examined against writing exemplars from 612 consenting well-wishers. 71.8% of inscriptions are consistent with their named author, 18.3% were penned by the card's organiser, and 5.6% were delegated to a third colleague, with proxy inscriptions concentrated in the card's final white space (odds ratio 3.7); recipients attributed a median 97% of their card's inscriptions to the named authors, and one participating workplace has since piloted a witnessed-signing procedure.

@misc{slop_u1gpuf,
  author       = {Sten Okwuosa and Thandiwe Solberg and Bram Ntuli},
  title        = {Attributing the Well-Wishers: Forensic Signature Examination of the Circulating Office Farewell Card},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.u1gpuf},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-subject-the-circulating-u1gpuf/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}