A forensic document examiner makes critical examinations, comparisons, and analysis of documents to establish genuineness or expose forgery. Specifically, a document examiner may be utilized to reveal alterations, additions or deletions, to identify persons through documents or parts of documents, as by showing the authorship of handwriting, or the source of printer entries and typewriting, to aid in fixing liability or culpability for any kind of fraud that makes use of documents, and generally to help protect the ·integrity of documents. Typical problems in the field include the identification of paper, ink and writing instruments as well as the establishment of date, source, history and relationships of documents. Other problems are the decipherment and sometimes restoration of obscure, deleted, or damaged parts of documents.

Questions concerning documents are answered through the application of sound scientific principles and knowledge gained from experience. The examiner of questioned document also brings into the analysis knowledge and use of applied techniques in a number of other fields, such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, language studies, etc. Other fields of interest to the examiner embrace manufacturing processes and the materials that go into the production of documents, as well as the methods, machines, instruments, and human agencies by which the parts of the documents are formed or brought together.

Forensic document examination often includes a study of the information provided by a document for discovery of evidence of genuineness, identification of persons, or to show significant relationships. The results of the analysis are usually incorporated into written reports for use by administrative and executive officers, boards, commissions, lawyers, security, investigation and law enforcement agencies, and often form the basis for testimony in both civil and criminal trials.