A preliminary study investigating class characteristics in the Gurmukhi handwriting of 1st and 2nd generation Punjabis

Abstract 

Gurmukhi is a written script of the Punjabi language spoken by 104 million people worldwide. It has been previously shown in a study of Punjabi residents to contain several unique class characteristics. In this paper these class characteristics and others were analysed in both 1st generation and 2nd generation Punjabi decedents residing in the United Kingdom. Using the Pearson Chi-squared test, eight characteristic features were found to be statistically different in the Gurmukhi handwriting of the two populations (p>0.01). Additionally there are several changes in previously identified class characteristics, such as script type and angularity of characters, between the 1st generation and 2nd generation Punjabi populations. These class characteristics may be of value to forensic document examiners and allow them to identify the population and the generation of the writer of a suspect document.

Keywords: Forensic science, Questioned documents, Handwriting, Punjabi, Gurmukhi, Class characteristics