Dating of Questioned Documents Using the Chronological Characteristics of Font

The chronological characteristics of fonts were studied to determine the date of questioned documents utilizing the time-tracing analysis of linguistics. Five types of characters originated from different historical times were collected, including the simplified Chinese of the Republic of China, variant characters, simplified characters, traditional characters, and second batch of simplified Chinese characters. Their separate years of beginning and ending were identified. Then the date was marked on the questioned documents based on the implicaton by the fonts, and whether the two(the beginning and ending)were in contradiction was judged to infer the date. The simplified Chinese of the Republic of China could be deduced the date of some questioned documents at around 1936. The lower limit of time of questioned documents deduced by variant Chinese character was 1955. The upper limit of deduction by simplified character was 1964. It should be cautious when identifying the differences between simplification of ancient writing and the simplified Chinese character of Republic of China. The lower limit of the date deduced by traditional Chinese was 1964. The date range of questioned documents deduced by secondround simplified Chinese characteristics was from 1977 to 1986. This study demonstrates that the date of the questioned documents could be inferred by analyzing the chronological characteristics of fonts. To some extent, this method, based on the years of beginning and ending of the five fonts and their morphological features, is also applicable to some of contemporary documents.