Mark signature comparison

[meanno]

I'm trying to determine if the mark on a soldier's discharge paper and the mark on a marriage certificate are the same person, a Thomas Davies. They appear to me to be similar apart from the different angle.
Are there any handwriting experts on here that could express a view?

[Gadget]

Sorry to disappoint but both are 'made by mark'. This means that someone else wrote the name and he made to cross.

They do have similarities though.

Sorry.

Gadget

[meanno]

Sorry to disappoint but both are 'made by mark'. This means that someone else wrote the name and he made to cross.

Sorry.

Gadget

I realise that. What I mean is that to my amateur eye the marks look similar. The one on the marriage certificate for instance looks very different from the lady's mark.
In other words - can marks be individual like signatures?

[Mike in Cumbria]

Sorry, but I think you're stretching credibility here, trying to compare one simple cross with another. Are there any other angles you could try to link the two men with?

[meanno]

Sorry, but I think you're stretching credibility here, trying to compare one simple cross with another. Are there any other angles you could try to link the two men with?

Yes it's because I'm stretching things that I asked the question. Circumstantially the two men fit but that's all - there's no firm evidence and deciding that the marks are made by the same man are the best hope I've got.
I'm clutching at straws I suppose and probably must discount the theory.

[Andy J2022]

I agree with Mike in Cumbria. A person who is so illiterate that they cannot sign their own name might possibly not even hold a pen or pencil in what we might recognise as a conventional style, so little can be derived from analysing the 'style' of particular Xs. For example, visualise the situation where the official is on one side of a desk and person about to sign is on the other, with the document between them. The literate person would turn the document around before writing their name. A person signing with a mark could do so from any direction so long as it was pointed out where they needed to put their mark. Furthermore the type of writing implement may disproportionately affect an illiterate person's X, where perhaps a fountain pen with a fancy nib might be more intimidating than a pencil for instance, leading to a more hesitant mark.

[Ruskie]

I agree with the others. There’s not enough here to make a judgement. I think the slight similarity in the thicker downstrokes and thinner cross strokes is probably due to the pen nib rather than the crosses being made by the same hand.

[meanno]

Thanks all I think I have my answer:-(!

[arthurk]

I think I've very occasionally spotted a fairly distinctive mark (perhaps based on an initial?) where you might be able to speculate on it being the same person, but where it's just a cross I think it's more or less impossible.

In fact to my eye, these crosses don't look particularly similar. The cross is usually more of an x than a +, and if you look at these as x's, the first one has the heavier stroke going from top left to bottom right, while the second one goes from top right to bottom left - it's tempting to think that one is by a left-hander and one by a right-hander. The first one also looks shakier.

However, there are many other factors involved: shape of nib, position (rotation and tilt) of book, sitting or standing, how much elbow room, whether the person needed to make his mark once a week or less than once a year (to give an idea of how consistent his marks might be), whether he'd hurt his hand etc etc. If you can answer all of those you might be able to do a fair comparison, but if you can't I'm afraid it's only ever going to be guesswork.