Dating Techniques
Order Description
Assignment Details
Describe and critically evaluate the effectiveness of the techniques commonly employed in the dating of documents, both in terms of the analysis of the inks used and the substrates on which the questioned document is produced. You should include in your discussion the advantages and disadvantages of each of the methods and the value of the information that can be gained
Useful References include:

Brunelle, R.L. (1992) Ink Dating – The State of the Art, J. Forensic Sci., 37(1), 113-124

Aginsky V.N., (1995) A Microspectrophotometric Method for Dating Ballpoint inks – A Feasibility Study, J, Forensic Sci., 40(3), 475-478

LaPorte G.M., Wilson J.D., Cantu A.A., Mancke S.A and Fortunato S.L. (2004) The Identification of 2-Phenoxyethanol in Ballpoint Inks Using Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry – Relevance to Ink Dating, J Forensic Sci, 49(1), 155-159

Xu Y., Wang J. And Yao L. (2006) Dating the writing age of black roller and gel inks by gas chromatography and UV-Vis spectrophotometer, For. Sci. Int., 162, 140-143

Pointers
• Re-read your work after printing and before submission.
• Check the presentation – does it look how you intended?
• Check for spelling and grammatical errors.

• Avoid criticising the paper for being badly written because you did not understand it. It has been reviewed by experts in the field before it was accepted for publication. If it was badly written it wouldn’t have been published! You may need to do some background reading in order to fully understand the paper.
• Reference your sources properly – otherwise you are potentially committing plagiarism.
• Avoid web-sites!