Yes/no for me. If it needs to be said that is not based on any graphological knowledge, just my inferences about human nature.

No for letter construction. I think that we tend to have a form for making a letter that we usually stick to, but when writing very fast we take "short cuts" to just form the "necessary" parts of the letter, hence the difference between sloppy and neat writing styles. Furthermore this was written to be a message, not a text in the same sense that the desktop poem is drawn and not "hand written" because of the large letters and a thick black marker used to write them. It is also a very short message so not a good sample size.

Yes for letter ratio, word spacing, slant, etc. and all the wholly unconscious writing traits that are the product of the hand’s muscle movements.

Duck i’m glad you bring that up. I’ve heard it said often that if you are trying, for whatever reason, to write a letter different to how you normally would, for example, much slower pace of word production in order to try and give the letter a more neat and presentable look, it’s so difficult to actually do it without unconsciously slipping back onto the odd bad habbit or getting lazy or simply automatically reverting back to what is you natural, in built style of writing. I mean I think obviously if you practised hard enough and often enough, then I wouldn’t think it’s would be such a difficult thing to write rather freely in a artificial style. Its only recently that I’ve really become aware of just how many people hold the opinion that Zodiac’s writing was contrived and not natural. I can’t say I am thoroughly convinced by this.
The reasons I have my doubts regarding this idea is because in serverl of Zodiac’s letters, it is clear that he is trying to write differently and neat than others. This is obvious by his attempts in several letters to write them and remove the tilted, slightly slanted effect from the words. But in everyone of thse attempts, he fails and while some are far better attemps than others, the slight slant appears to force it’s way back to the surface. The most clear, obvious and precise example of this is this letter:

Notice how he starts off with his usual ‘This is Zodiac Speaking’ as vertical and upright. In this letter there are signs of the slant almost instantly, and by the time he gets to the 4th line, it’s quite noticeable and the slant continues to get progressively more prominent throughout the entire letter.

So the question I have is, if Zodiac’s attempts at altering something simple about his writing style are easily evident due to his apparent inability to maintain the vertical, unnatural letter printing style and always reverts back seemingly without consciously making the choice to do so, would this really be likely the writer would revert back to his natural right tilt but not his handwriting itself? I mean not only that, but letters like the one above, and more so, the one to Mel Belli, are clearly written by him talking his time, attempting to eliminate the slant etc, and then there are many that appear written rather more messily and appear to my untrained eye at least as though Zodiac had written them if a fairly free flow style, not really showing evidence at all that the writing is slowly written and in anyway looks like its been an obvious attempt to disguise it. So, my question again, would it really be plausible and likely that the man who can clearly be seen reverting to his slight slant as letters get longer and seemingly is not making a conscious choice to do it would at the same time seem to have no trouble in staying within the ability to produce letters and words in an alien hand that appears at face value, naturally written?

So, would anyone be able to give an opinion based on something like experience, qualified to do so, or maybe even something an expert may have said that you can repeat?

I think we can learn alot about Zodiac’s true, unaltered, undisguised writing,from the car door at Berryessa. Z didn’t have all the time in the world like he had when he mailed his letters, no time to disguise & alter it. At Berryessa, he had just killed two people(thought so anyhow),and likely didnt want to hang around for long,so likely did a quick note in his own real,everyday writing. What jumps out at you??

I see the #2, looks like the letter Z,no curl at the top.

The letter K is an obvious 3 stroke

The letter F, is a candy cane F, nice curl at the top.

For me,these are 3 writing traits I look for when examining possible Z writing

I was giving this door printing quite a lot of attention the other day also Morph and said on a thread that the word "Vallejo" appears very Z like, but then the word’s under it "By Knife" do not. I think the explanation for the seemingly different style of the phrase "By Knife" is because of location of where he wrote it. He wrote it low down on the base of the door, and when you look at the words By Knife it seems fairly obvious Z must have been leaning to write it, or struggling to reach down to write it because of a couple of things that are noticeable.
Clearly the word ‘Vallejo’ seems to be written as you may expect, all letter seem easily affixed to the door. But the lower case e in ‘By Knife’ is clearly created using a two stroke method. As is the letter b a two stroke effort. I think that is one likely reason why Zodiac’s last two words seem non consistent with his usual style because he is deliberately avoiding having to squat down to the necessary lever to write the phrase in one flowing, easy motion and is instead, for some reason, choosing to lean down and write it in lazy style that he cannot manage in his usual writing and needs to use two strokes for the lower case e. He cannot be trying to do this deliberately because above it the e appears as it would usually do with Vallejo written at a more reasonable level on the door.
I could by completely wrong of course Morph in this analysis but I think it is the likely cause for his unusual printing of ‘by knife’.

Good point about the "by knife". I think that is a very likely explanation.

What ducking said it is like comparing apples to tomatoes …. there both fruit

I think we can learn alot about Zodiac’s true, unaltered, undisguised writing,from the car door at Berryessa. Z didn’t have all the time in the world like he had when he mailed his letters, no time to disguise & alter it. At Berryessa, he had just killed two people(thought so anyhow),and likely didnt want to hang around for long,so likely did a quick note in his own real,everyday writing. What jumps out at you??

I see the #2, looks like the letter Z,no curl at the top.
The letter K is an obvious 3 stroke
The letter F, is a candy cane F, nice curl at the top.

For me,these are 3 writing traits I look for when examining possible Z writing

Morf – "Berryessa door writing as the real standard" – bloody good idea!
Those three jump out at me too – and the "Vallejo" also jumps out at me because the spacing’s great – JUST like the August 4th letter.
Another thing I marvel at you don’t quite show – the colon he writes in the "6:30" text.

It’s got pretty round circles in, and the bottom one looks part-filled, too. It looks like the kind of thing he was doing with the dots on the "i’s" in the Exorcist letter, in fact – and an amazing feature for the guy to include when, just as you say, he did it in a real hurry.

The dot thing has been noted before and Bryan himself points out that very feature in the documentary when he sees the door again for the first time since that day.

Kinda makes you wonder if he did do the door thing first. Then head down to them. "Oh there’s two of you" (I want to report a murder – no, a double murder).

The one thing I would point about the door writing is that it’s NOT natural. It may be close to his natural writing style but it can’t be natural. People don’t write on vertical surfaces as a habit. There’s a complete lack of arm support so it’s more like painting than writing in that respect.

The word VALLEJO looks spot on to me, especially the letter J.

I also think that squatting down and writing at an odd angle would certainly change the style a bit. I did this myself today when I wrote a note to myself on a notepad hanging on my fridge, its a weird angle to write at.

Personally, I think that Z wrote it AFTER he attacked instead of before. He would have no idea ahead of time if he would wind up shooting or stabbing them,etc. Although, by doing it first,he could concentrate on leaving the area faster as opposed to stopping to write on the door after the attack

Pretty clear to me, look at the same letters from the desktop, same Author in my opinion

The "J" was always something that bugged me. Not that we cannot find a nice "J" (like the door) written by Zodiac, but when in a hurry, as it would seem with the door, Zodiac usually wrote sort of a jaggedy "J" like this one:

And most of the time, did not fill in his circles…although you will find those too.

The "J" was always something that bugged me. Not that we cannot find a nice "J" (like the door) written by Zodiac, but when in a hurry, as it would seem with the door, Zodiac usually wrote sort of a jaggedy "J" like this one:

And most of the time, did not fill in his circles…although you will find those too.

You will find them and the example you posted above T to show the J carries a good example of them in S.F.

If only the desktop author wrote CHRONICLE on the desk, would make things even easier.

I was looking at the letter J a bit closer on the desktop, and comparing to Zodiac’s known J, and there is a bit of a difference:

Trav, I know you have probably done more side by side exams of writing than probably anybody, do all of Zodiac’s letter J’s always look the same? In the desktop, it looks to have a 90 degree angle,in the example of Zodiac’s J, not so much. Still,way more similarities than differences

We can go beyond the handwriting itself,and dissect Zodiac’s writing habits, which are very strangein themselves. He oddly breaks and splits words up,and uses odd spacing. It seems like these traits would be very easy to see in his everyday writing(assuming he somehow didn’t make these odd spacings on purpose).

This letter for example:

Soc iety
Miss ed
Im plore
Im platt
M iss ed

If he truly wrote like this every day, his writing would be very recognizable. I know you can’t convict somebody on writing alone,but if every suspect had to write out a full page, and these odd spacings and broken words were his true habits,they would be dad give aways. We can do this in letter after letter. It would be interesting to see if every spaced/broken up word, is always spaced/broken up in the same way.

I know in at least one z letter, he spelled a word wrong, only to spell it correct later on in the same letter,an indication he purposely spelled it wrong. Would he do the same with odd spacing & breaks?

No all of his j’s aren’t the same. He uses what we think of as a ‘normal’ j mostly when it’s uppercase but he also uses the j we see on the desktop which IMO is just a less jaggedy version of the jaggedy one he uses as his lower case j’s (thanks for the word jaggedy T). Look at the Belli letter for that one and also a less jaggedy one beside it (basically not rounded like his uppercase J’s but with an angle rather than a curve on/at the tail).

So he has one J (rounded with a top stroke) for his uppercase. Another for his lowercase which has variations, some are more jaggedy than others but they all have that little kink or turn as opposed to a curve. He sometimes uses his lowercase j’s as upper case. See the first three letters he wrote for examples of that in ‘July’.

Scrap that lol, well add to it at least. There’s another. The uppercase J with no top bar and it’s curved not kinked.

I’ll get the others to show. Give me a mo’.

A curvier example of the jaggedy one T posted, with dot. Some of them don’t have one.

A version of the less jaggedy lowercase with a very short tail

The uppercase with T-bar and curved tail.

And an example of the jaggedy lowercase being used as an uppercase.

So, again, no – definitely doesn’t use the same j but he alternates within a definable set. I’m sure there’s more but that’s enough to show the variations.