How to create an electronic signature

What counts as an electronic signature

The US ESIGN Act defines an electronic signature as 'an electronic sound, symbol, or process' attached to or logically associated with a record and adopted with the intent to sign. EU and UK law use similar wording. So a drawn squiggle, a typed name, a ticked box saying 'I agree' and a scanned image of your ink signature can all qualify.

What does not make a difference is how pretty it is. What does matter is that you meant to sign, and that there is a way to show it was you. That second part comes from how the signature was collected, not from the image itself.

Drawing a signature

Drawing feels closest to signing on paper. On a phone, sign with a fingertip with the phone turned sideways for more room. On a laptop, a trackpad works better than a mouse; Preview on a Mac can even use your iPhone as a signing pad via Select Device. With a stylus on a tablet or touchscreen laptop, the result is close to real ink.

Sign larger than you need and let the tool shrink it. Small, careful signatures come out shaky.

Typing a signature

Most tools offer a 'type' option that sets your name in a script font. It is quick, consistent and perfectly valid for ordinary contracts. Some people prefer it to a mouse-drawn signature that looks nothing like their real one. The courts in England have accepted a typed name at the foot of an email as a signature (Golden Ocean Group v Salgaocar Mining Industries, 2012), so a typed name in a signature box is on firm ground.

Making a clean image of your ink signature

For an image that looks like your real signature, sign on plain white paper with a black felt-tip or gel pen, which photographs better than a ballpoint. Photograph it in daylight, straight on, without shadows. Then crop tightly around the signature.

• On a Mac, Preview's Camera option in the signature tool does this for you and removes the background.
• To make a transparent PNG yourself, open the photo in Preview, use Tools > Instant Alpha and click the white background, then export as PNG.
• On iPhone, Markup's Add Signature can draw one directly, which is often cleaner than a photo.
• Save the file somewhere private. Anyone with your signature image can paste it onto a document.

Your signature when signing with Sign PDF

When someone sends you a document through Sign PDF, you tap a signature box and choose Draw, Type or Upload. Drawing is the default. You do the same once for initials, then tap each initials box to apply them.

Behind the signature, we record the evidence that makes it hold up: you confirmed a six-digit code sent to your email, agreed to sign electronically, and signed at a recorded time from a recorded IP address and device. The finished PDF is sealed so the signature cannot be lifted and reused on another version without the change showing. That evidence is what separates a signature from a picture of one.