I have also modified my signature so that I can write out my surname without lifting pen from paper--that was an important exercise in high school--full signature, legible, only lifting the pen off the paper twice. I'm not going through that shit again for some new surname. He can have mine.
Jonathan ,'Lies My Parents Told Me'
Natter 70: Hookers and Blow
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
I've occasionally misspelled my name when I was signing it. Normally I just go for a big A and then a scrawl afterwards. My dad's signature looks like a stylized M. There's no M in his name.
When I was in my late thirties, I closed an account at a credit union that I opened when I was in my early teens, almost 25 years earlier. They pulled a copy of my signature when I opened the account, and my it looked exactly the same as it does now.
See, my maiden name and married name (which I didn't legally change to but use in some social stations) are both S-squiggle-ff. Convenient!
I actually have several possible signatures because I experimented a lot with my handwriting and calligraphy in high school. I try to be consistent on legal documents, which is the mostly squiggle. I do wish I had some kind of occasion to bust out the Cyrrilic signature, though, it looks cool.
Tim, who has a 9-letter German last name, signs his full name as a "T" and one long squiggly dash. I can forge his signature SO EASILY.
Of course, I don't really have any *need* to, but I like knowing that I can.
I had a coworker whose first name started with an A whose signature was basically a star and a squiggle. I'm sure she came up with it at 13 or whenever the rest of us did, and it just makes me laugh.
My dad's initials are two Hs, so he used to draw two vertical lines, and then a horizontal one through them. Not for legal stuff, though.
My mom used to forge my dad's sig in order to deposit his paychecks. Which was utterly ridiculous because it looked NOTHING like his sig (it had all the letters!) but it was never questioned.
One place I worked at did handwritten checks (small business) half the time the owner couldn't spell my last name right and occasionally she just left it off completely but the bank still cashed the checks.
My mother, for an honest person, is quite the forger.She wouldn't even have to trace Don's signature to get it right.