SCIENTIFIC & TECHNICAL

Forensic linguistics: an assessment of the

CUSUM method for the determination
of authorship
RA HARDCASTLE*
The Forensic Science Service, Priory House, Gooch Street North, Birmingham, United Kingdom B5 6QQ

Journal of the Forensic Science Society 1993; 33: 95-106

Received 1 October 1992; accepted 20 January 1993

The application of a proposed technique, based upon
the cumulative sum ("CUSUM"), to forensic
problems such as the authentication of disputed police
interview records, is described. The method is found
to be ill-defined and its application amateurish. In its
present form it cannot be accepted as providing
reliable evidence of authorship when applied to either
the written or spoken word.
Die Anwendung einer vorgeschlagenen Technik,
basierend auf der kumulativen Summe ("CUSUM"),
wurde beschrieben fur forensische Probleme wie der
Nachweis der Echtheit von in Frage gestellten
Vernehmungsprotokollen der Polizei. Es hat sich
herausgestellt, dass die Methode schlecht definiert ist
und die Anwendung dilettantisch ist. In dieser
aktuellen Form kann sie nicht akzeptiert werden, um
zuverlassige Beweise zu liefern uber die Urhebersch-
aft von geschriebenem oder gesprochenem Text.

L'application d'une technique proposCe, basCe sur la
somme cumulative "CUSUM" appliquCe B des
problbmes forensiques tels que l'authentification de
procbs-verbaux de police contestCs est dCcrite. La
mCthode s'est avCrCe ma1 dCfinie et son application
ressort plus de l'amateurisme qu'autre chose. Dans sa
forme actuelle, elle ne peut pas Ctre acceptCe pour
procurer des indices valables de I'identitC de l'auteur
lorsqu'elle est utilisCe pour l'analyse du texte Ccrit ou
parlC.
Se describe la aplicaci6n de una tCcnica, basada en las
sumas acumulativas, (CUSUM) , a problemas forenses
tales como la autentificacidn de entrevistas grabadas
de la policia. El mCtodo no parece ser muy definido y
su aplicaci6n reuslta amateur. En su forma actual no
puede ser ace~tablecomo prueba segura de evidencia
de autoria ni para la palabra hablada ni para la
escrita.

Key Words: Document examination; Text Analysis; Stylistics.

* Present address: Document Evidence Ltd, Gatsby Court, 172 Holliday Street, Birmingham, United Kingdom B1 1TJ.

JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-106

Introduction
In an earlier paper [I], the results of an investigation
into the application of Stylometry, a method of
literary stylistics devised by Andrew Morton, were
presented. Briefly, it was found that the method had
not been adequately tested on texts of forensic
interest of known authorship for it to be accepted as
wholly valid. Furthermore, the method could only be
applied to relatively lengthy utterances of over 1000,
and preferably over 3000, words. Smith [2] has since
summarised the findings of other investigations into
the method and severely criticised Morton's practical
procedures.
Morton is now advocating the use of a technique
based upon cumulative sum analysis (abbreviated to
CUSUM) [3-51. He has been consulted and prepared
evidence in a number of cases where it has been
alleged that confession statements and police records
of interviews have been fabricated in part or in whole.
The CUSUM method has been applied to texts as
short as 20 sentences and is claimed to be capable of
locating insertions of just a few sentences of "foreign"
material of different authorship.
In his publications [3,4], Morton used many examples
from literary texts to support his theory, and claimed
that the method was also valid when applied to texts
of forensic interest such as statements or interview
records. He averred that the method was insensitive
to differences between written and spoken utterances
even when the speech comprised replies to questions
rather than normal conversation. In this paper, tests
of these claims are presented in the form of
examinations of utterances of known authorship. In
addition, difficulties in the practical application of the
method are identified.
The basis of CUSUM analysis
The essence of the method is the comparison of the
rates of use of a particular class of word. Morton
referred to such rates of use, rather inappropriately,
as "habits". This nomenclature has been followed
here, but it should be noted that these properties of
language have not been established to be habits and
Morton identified no psychological or linguistic
processes which might generate such habits. Examples
of such classes are nouns, verbs, short words (i.e.,
words of 2 or 3 letters), and vowel words (i.e., words
beginning with a vowel). The first two identify words
by grammatical use, whilst the latter two are more
arbitrary definitions. Further classes may be formed
by combining two or more simple classes; Morton
often used the class of Short words + Vowel words.
The application of the method depends upon two
hypotheses: that in all the utterances (written or
spoken) of some people, words of a particular class
will occur as a consistent proportion of the total
number of words in each sentence; and that different
people may use words of a particular class at different
and distinguishable rates.
Thus a disputed text, containing words of a particular
class occurring at a rate which is consistent but which
differs significantly from specimen texts of the person
concerned, would be judged to be of different
authorship. A disputed text, with such words
occurring at a rate which varies from one part to
another when the person involved is known to be
consistent in specimen material, would be judged to
be of multiple authorship. A similarity in word rates
between two texts would not, however, prove
common authorship.
Morton has advanced no theoretical basis as to why
the features he examined should be consistent in a
person's utterances, or why they should be charac-
teristic of a person. This is a serious limitation, since
there is no way of predicting circumstances in which
the method might not be valid. Morton claimed that
people can be consistent in their rates of use of
particular classes of words, irrespective of the type of
utterance, written or spoken, personal letter or
formal, conversation or interview, etc. Certain
instances have been identified as the cause of
anomalies: sentences containing long lists, sentences
containing reported speech, very short replies to
questions and formal modes of address, but there is
no comprehensive catalogue of such instances and no
rigorous procedure to identify them.
Morton often employed the class of Short words and
the combined class of Short + Vowel words because
these yielded higher rates of occurrence and
reportedly greater consistency than other classes. He
referred to Short words as being "filler" words such as
"and", "of)', "the7', "to", etc, which are not related
to the subject matter of the text. However, a
proportion of words of 2 or 3 letters in any text are
subject-related but these are not specifically excluded.
Furthermore, words beginning with a vowel (other
than those of 2 or 3 letters) are predominantly
subject-related, and the notion that occurrences of
such words can distinguish authors is preposterous.
When these vowel words are added to the Short
JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-106
words, roughly half of all the words within a text fall that changes in sentence length from one sentence to
into the combined class. the next are small. Note that both plots always end on
the horizontal axis because of the way in which the
The claim that the CUSUM method can be used to
values are calculated.
compare texts of written utterances with spoken ones
is crucial where statements and interview records are
concerned. There are many linguistic differences
between writing and speech, and the claim that the
method is insensitive to these is a remarkable one.
There are obvious examples of such differences.
People commonly use contracted forms such as
"I'm" and "didn't" in speech but the full forms "I
am" and "did not" in writing.
Replies to questions are often incomplete in the
sense that they lack grammatical components
normally present in written sentences. For example,
Q: "Where did the car go then?"
A: "Down the street and round the corner."
Here the reply contains no verb and no subject for a
verb.
In speech, replies to questions are often prefaced by
"Yes" or "No".
In an interview, the interviewee sometimes echoes
part of the question in his reply. For example:
Q: "Did you already know the answer?"
A: "How could I know the answer?" 1 v Sentence number

Application of the CUSUM method

Morton used a graphical device called a CUSUM
chart to analyse a text. The chart is, in effect, one
graph superimposed upon another. The first graph
plots a cumulative sum (hence the name CUSUM)
derived from the lengths of the sentences in the text,
while the second plots a cumulative sum derived from
the numbers of words of the chosen class in the
sentences. Figure 1 shows the sentence-length
CUSUM line and the "habit" CUSUM line, plotted
separately, for a specimen text written by subject A.
The worked example for this text is given in Appendix
1, to show the construction of a CUSUM chart.
It is obvious that there is a relationship between the
shapes of the two CUSUM lines but with a difference
of scale. This means, usually, that the longer the
sentence the more words there are of the chosen class,
as would be expected. The overall shape is not
directly relevant to the attribution of authorship but it
does provide other information. For example, an
upward slope in the sentence-length CUSUM plot
indicates that the corresponding sentence is longer
than average, and the steeper the slope the greater the
departure from the average. A smooth graph shows
FIGURE 1 CUSUM analysis of the first specimen letter written
by subject A showing (a) the sentence length CUSUM line and (b)
the habit CUSUM l i e , plotted separately to the same scale.
The correspondence between the two graphs was
demonstrated by Morton by applying a scaling-factor
to the values in the habit CUSUM plot and then
superimposing it upon the sentence-length CUSUM
plot. He calculated the scaling-factor as the ratio of
the maximum to minimum CUSUM value ranges for
the individual plots (see Appendix 1). The result is the
CUSUM chart as shown in Figure 2a.
If a person produced text with a very consistent
proportion of the words in each sentence being of the
class under scrutiny, then the habit CUSUM line
would closely shadow the sentence-length CUSUM
line throughout the CUSUM chart, no matter what its
shape. The correspondence will rarely if ever be
exact; in real texts, some natural variation in the rate
of use of words is to be expected and the lengths of
sentences themselves have an influence-if the
average number of habit words per sentence was, for
example, 0.5, then all the sentences with odd numbers

JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-1 06

of words would produce slight divergences between
the two CUSUM lines, since it is not possible to have
half of the words in these sentences being of the
defined class.
-sJ Sentence number
(b)
FIGURE 2 CUSUM analysis of the first specimen letter written
by subject A showing (a) the CUSUM chart constructed according
to Morton's method using the scaling factor (see text); (b) the
corresponding histogram of the differences between observed
and expected numbers of "habit" words (separation change)
for each sentence of the text. - sentence length CUSUM
....."habit" CUSUM.
The critical part of the analysis is the identification of
a significant divergence between the two CUSUM
lines. Morton claimed that such a divergence
demonstrated different authorship for part of the text
since it indicated a difference in the rate of use of the
words under scrutiny. He made no use of standard
statistical measures to compare the two sets of data
values, but advanced the criterion that when the
maximum vertical separation between the CUSUM
lines is less than the separation between any two
successive points within either of the lines, the use of
words is considered to be consistent. This criterion
makes no sense at all. Whilst the separation between
the CUSUM lines does have something to do with the
consistency of the use of the words under scrutiny, the
maximum separation between points within a line is
determined usually by the longest sentence in the text,
since it represents the greatest departure from the
average value.
In Figure 2, the maximum separation between the two
CUSUM lines occurs at sentence 15, whilst the
maximum separation between points within both lines
occurs between sentences 13 and 14, because sentence
14 is the longest sentence at 58 words. Morton
concluded that this particular text showed no
inconsistency in the habit under scrutiny.
Even if Morton's criterion were accepted a priori,
there remain other serious objections to its practical
application:
The CUSUM chart does not represent directly the
deviations from consistency, sentence by sentence,
throughout the text but portrays instead cumulative
deviations. As a result, the inter-line separations
are more likely to be greatest near the middle of the
chart than near to either end. Indeed, the lines are
constrained to meet at the right-hand end. It could
also be argued that the longer the text the greater
the possibility of a chance separation of the lines.
The scaling-factor used by Morton to allow the
superimposition of the two graphs is imprecise (see
Appendix 2). The application of the correct scaling
factor can make the fit between the two CUSUM
lines better in some areas and worse in others. The
way in which Morton's factor is calculated means
that it is a function of the average sentence length
and habit words rate within only that portion of the
text represented by the CUSUM chart data points
lying between the highest peak and the lowest
trough. If the peak and trough lie close together,
this will be a minor, perhaps unrepresentative,
portion of the text. If the peak precedes the trough,
this portion of text will contain a high proportion of
short sentences; if the peak follows the trough, it
will contain a high proportion of long sentences. In
some charts, the portion of text delimited in the
sentence-length CUSUM line is somewhat different
from that delimited in the habit CUSUM line.
Morton reported that in general the more frequent
the use of the class of words under scrutiny (i.e.,
the greater the proportion of these words in each
sentence), then the better the correspondence
between the two CUSUM lines, yet this was not
taken into account in setting a level of significance
for the inter-line separation.
If the punctuation of the text is by someone other
than the source of the utterance (e.g., by a police
notetaker in an interview), a change in punctuation
JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-106
 could directly affect the outcome of the test for
consistency, if it altered the value of the maximum
separation of successive points within each CUSUM
line.
When a deviation from absolute consistency occurs
within a text, thereby causing the CUSUM lines to
diverge, the cumulative nature of the chart means
that the separation is "carried forward" to the
following part of the chart. Morton advocated the
use of a transparent overlay of the habit CUSUM
graph so that it could be moved around with respect
to the sentence-length CUSUM graph. This is a
very subjective procedure and appears to result in
many ad hoc interpretations.
The criterion does not take adequate account of the
different ranges of natural variation to be expected
in the utterances of different people, nor of the
possibility that different situations may lead to
different ranges of variation in the utterances of the
same person.
In reports issued by Morton in particular cases, it is
apparent that he did not rely solely upon the stated
criterion for consistency, but the procedure by which
he arrived at his conclusions is not clear. He has
stated that the method simply involves the presenta-
tion of the CUSUM chart and the posing of the
question "Are they [the two CUSUM graphs] similar
or are they different?", and that in this judgement the
layman stands on almost the same footing as the
expert! If this is the case, then that judgement is
seriously hampered by the use of many different y-axis
scales in the CUSUM charts that Morton presented.
Where Morton produced charts with compressed
scales, a consistency was often identified. On the
other hand, where he produced charts with expanded
scales, differences tended to be reported. The
deplorable lack of scientific rigour in the CUSUM
method means that in its present form it cannot be
accepted as a reliable technique.
Alternative methods of presenting the data
One problem with the CUSUM chart is that judging
the vertical separation between the two CUSUM lines
by eye is not always easy. Where the lines are rising or
falling steeply together, the eye is drawn to the
separation perpendicular to the general line direction
rather than to the separation of interest. Since it is the
vertical separations, and not the shape of the chart,
that is supposed to be of prime importance, then
perhaps these vertical separation values themselves
should be plotted instead of the CUSUM values. Of
JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-1 06
course, this would preclude the use of transparencies
to manipulate the charts.
If the proportion of habit words in a sentence were
the same as the proportion of habit words in the text
as a whole, then in the CUSUM chart there would be
neither a widening nor a narrowing of the separation
between the two CUSUM lines. (If this property held
for all the text, the CUSUM lines would be identical.)
The change in separation between the two CUSUM
lines is directly related to how close the observed
proportion of habit words in the sentence is to the
average proportion for the whole text. The change in
separation can therefore be expressed as:
Separation change
= Observed habit words - Expected habit words,
where Expected habit words = Sentence length
Average habit words Der sentence
,,
Average sentence length
A histogram can be constructed of the differences
between observed and expected values throughout the
text. Figure 2b shows the histogram for the text
analysed in Figure 2a. Whilst a positive'value indicates
a sentence with an "excess" of habit words, it does
not necessarily imply an increase in the CUSUM lines
separation at that point in the text, only that the habit
line is rising faster (or falling less quickly) than the
sentence-length line. What is important is the
magnitude of the values. A large value (positive or
negative) indicates that the sentence departs markedly
from the average rate of use of the habit words.
Obviously the more variation there is in this chart, the
more variable the person is in their use of the habit
words. Inspection of the histogram in Figure 2b shows
that there is considerable variation from one sentence
to another, with several sentences containing 2-3
habit words more or fewer than predicted by the
overall average rate.
Interestingly, the separation changes are counts of
words which are not normalised according to the
lengths of the sentences themselves. Thus a difference
between observed and expected words of, for
example, two words in a sentence 10 words long has
the same effect upon the separation between the
CUSUM lines as does a difference of two words in a
sentence 50 words long.
The complications in the CUSUM chart associated
with deviations from consistency, in one part of the
text, affecting parts of the chart associated with other
parts of the text, could be avoided by plotting a
moving average of the separation changes described
above.
Examples and discussion
Figures 3 to 8 show various examples of CUSUM
charts. Figure 6 relates to the rate of use of the class
of Short words while the other figures relate to the
rate of use of the combined class of Short and Vowel
words. Each chart is displayed together with the
corresponding histogram, showing the differences
between the observed and predicted habit words for
each sentence. All the CUSUM charts have been
generated using the scaling factor calculated according
to the method advocated bv Morton.
Figures 3 and 4 show CUSUM charts and
corresponding histograms for further specimen texts
written by Subject A. The fit between the two
CUSUM lines in Figure 3a is somewhat poorer than
that in Figure 2, but in Figure 3b, the lines are well
separated between sentences 4 and 22. Inspection of
the histogram below reveals that this is the result of a
cluster of slightly lower than average habit rates for
sentences 1 to 6 and a cluster of slightly higher than
average habit rates for sentences 21 to 26. The first
cluster causes the CUSUM lines to diverge, while the
second causes them to converge again. (The effects of
the high habit rate values observed for sentences 13
FIGURE 3 CUSUM analysis of (a) the second and (b) the fourth specimen letter written by subject A. -entente length CUSUM
.--.-
"habit" CUSUM.
100
and 14 are almost cancelled out by the low values for
sentences 12 and 15.) It is possible that if a cluster of
high or low values occurs within a questioned text, it
could be erroneously interpreted as a section of text of
different authorship to the rest.
In Figure 4a there is a large divergence between the
CUSUM lines. This chart illustrates one of the
weaknesses of the CUSUM method already referred
to. The vertical separation between the CUSUM lines
between sentences 10 and 26 is roughly constant; it
arises from deviations in the preceding and following
parts of the text. In Morton's procedure, this would
be demonstrated by moving a transparency of one
CUSUM line with respect to the other. In this
particular case, Morton identified only sentence 8 as
being abnormal, and inspection of the text showed
that this sentence was indeed rather confused. Morton
claimed that omitting this sentence from the text was
all that was necessary to remove the inconsistency
from the CUSUM chart.
Figure 4b shows the result of omitting sentence 8. The
separation between the two CUSUM lines is only
reduced a little. Inspection of the histograms in
Figures 4a and 4b reveals that whilst sentence 8 did
have the greatest deviation from the expected habit
rate, sentences 3 and 33 were also atypical. Sentence 3
J
(b) Sentence number
JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-106
 I
Sentence number
(b)

FIGURE 4 CUSUM analysis of (a) the thud specimen letter and (b) the third specimen letter, omitting sentence 8. -sentence length
CUSUM -....
"habit" CUSUM.

FIGURE 5 CUSUM analysis of the first and second specimen letters written by subject A, when joined together as one piece of text.
-sentence length CUSUM .....
"habit" CUSUM.

JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95- 106 101

included a list, a feature identified by Morton as a
possible cause of problems, but the list was short,
containing only four items. Sentence 33 contained no
identifiable abnormality. Although there may be some
justification for the removal of sentence 3, there is
none for sentence 33. In view of the range of variation
found in most texts, it is not surprising that such
atypical sentences do occur.
-5 1 Sentence number
FIGURE 6 CUSUM analysis of words spoken by Morton when
giving evidence in court. - sentence length CUSUM
-....
"habit" CUSUM.
Morton often produced a CUSUM chart of a
questioned text combined with a specimen text (by
simply appending one text to the other), showing a
large divergence between the two CUSUM lines as
evidence of different authorship for the two texts.
However, this procedure merely demonstrates that
the two texts have different average rates of use of the
habit under scrutiny. That this is not a reliable test of
authorship is easily demonstrated; analysis of different
specimen texts from the same subject shows that
different texts (which individually have closely
corresponding CUSUM lines) can have significantly
different average habit rates. For example, the text
used for Figure 2 has an average habit rate (for the
combination of short words and words beginning with
a vowel) of 51%, whereas that used for Figure 3a has
an average rate of 63%. Figure 5 shows the results
obtained when the two texts are combined. The large
divergence between the two CUSUM lines is a direct
result of the difference between the average habit
rates for the two texts.
Figures 2 to 5 relate to specimens of written texts, all
letters written by subject A to a relative or friend
within a two-year time period. When specimen
transcripts of spoken words are analysed, the range of
variation encountered appears to be greater than that
seen within written texts. An apposite illustration of
this is provided by an analysis of Morton's own words.
In his publications [3,4], Morton presented a
CUSUM analysis of a combination of three of his own
written texts, spanning 20 years, to demonstrate a
consistency in his own use of short words. However,
Figure 6 shows that this apparent consistency does not
extend to his spoken words. The text used for Figure 6
consists of the first 40 sentences spoken by Morton
when giving evidence during a trial (taken from the
official court transcript).
Figure 7 shows CUSUM analyses of the replies of
subjects B and C taken from undisputed police
interview records. The former interview was recorded
contemporaneously as a handwritten transcript by a
police notetaker; the latter is a transcription made
from a tape-recording of an interview. In both cases
the CUSUM chart shows inconsistencies between the
two CUSUM lines.
The next two figures are examples of CUSUM
analyses of questioned police interview records
(contemporaneously written) where Morton con-
cluded that the interviewee's replies could not be
accepted as the utterance of one person. Figure 8a
shows a CUSUM analysis of the replies attributed to
subject A in an interview. In his report for this
particular case, Morton stated "that [subject A] is not
the source of the utterance attributed to him. . . . .
could hardly be clearer." It cannot be discerned how
this conclusion was reached. The CUSUM chart
satisfies Morton's own criterion regarding the
maximum separation between the CUSUM lines, and
the histogram in Figure 8a shows that there are no
substantial deviations from the average habit rate.
Furthermore, the specimen texts of subject A
analysed in Figures 3a, 3b and 4b show deviations
between the CUSUM lines of greater magnitude than
those occurring in Figure 8a.
Figure 8b shows a CUSUM analysis of the replies
attrib-uted to subject D in a questioned interview
record. Here Morton concluded that sentences 17-22
JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-106
%,-
5
5
-
.
111 I I1 1 I1 . , 1,1111 11
E
v,
.
1

I I1 ''I'I'
Sentence number

FIGURE 7 CUSUM analysis of the replies spoken by (a) subject B, taken from an undisputed police record of interview recorded in writing
by a police notetaker, and (b) subject C, taken from a transcript of a tape-recorded police interview. - sentence length CUSUM
...--
"habit" CUSUM.

54

o
Q n -
m .
C

-c
.3 0.
I1 1 1'
I
"
I II I
II

rA

-5A
(a) Sentence number (b)

FIGURE 8 CUSUM analysis of the disputed replies atlributed to (a) subject A, in a handwritten police record of interview, and (b) subject
D, in a handwritten police record of interview. -
sentence length CUSUM .---.
"habit" CUSUM.

JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-106 103

were not the utterances of the same person as 1-16,
without examining any specimen material from
subject D. The separation of the CUSUM lines for
this region of the chart is no greater than
discrepancies seen in specimen texts of other authors
such as those of subject A. Furthermore, inspection of
the histogram below the chart reveals that it is only
sentences 18 and 20 which could reasonably be
considered to be atypical, but differences in habit
rates of a comparable magnitude are found within
specimen material. If these two sentences were not
the utterances of subject D, it would seem that they
must be the utterances of two other people, one with
a lower habit rate and one with a higher habit rate.
Conclusions
It is clear that, for texts of forensic interest at least,
the CUSUM method in its present form cannot be
regarded as objective or reliable. The necessity for the
similarity between the two CUSUM lines to be judged
by eye is a major failing. Some differences between
the lines is always to be expected; what constitutes a
significant difference needs to be rigorously defined
for the method to be at all credible. O n the one hand
Morton indicated that it was not the detailed profiles
of the CUSUM lines that was important but the
separations between them, whilst on the other hand
he insisted that transparencies be used to allow one
CUSUM line to be translated or even rotated with
respect to the other, a procedure which compares
details of the line shapes and ignores the separations.
The histograms of (observed-expected) values shown
in Figures 2-7 show that a considerable variation in
habit rate occurs from one sentence to the next within
specimen texts. The CUSUM chart does not appear to
be the best way of representing the data; a simple
moving average, for example, might be more
appropriate.
Without a rigorous procedure to identify all "naturally
anomalous" sentences, or to estimate their rate of
occurrence, the possibility that spurious discrepancies
will arise between the two CUSUM lines ought to be
allowed for. A systematic survey of a large number of
texts of written and spoken utterances of known
authorship is required to set confidence limits on the
conclusions drawn from analyses in real cases. Many
of the criticisms levelled at Morton's Stylometry
method [I] are equally applicable to his CUSUM
method. In particular the CUSUM method has not yet
been advanced beyond the stage of hypothesis, and
should not be accepted in court proceedings as
providing trustworthy evidence unless, and until, it is
refined and properly validated.
References
1. Totty RN, Hardcastle RA and Pearson J. Forensic
linguistics: the determination of authorship from
habits of style. Journal of the Forensic Science
Society 1987; 27: 13-28.
2. Smith MWA. Forensic stylometry: A theoretical basis
for further developments of practical methods.
Journal of the Forensic Science Society 1989; 29:
15-33.
3. Morton AQ and Michaelson S. The Qsum Plot.
Internal Report CSR-3-90. University of Edinburgh:
Department of Computer Science 1990.
4. Morton AQ. Proper Words in Proper
Places. Departmental Research Report 1991/R18.
University of Glasgow: Department of Computing
Science 1991.
5. Morton AQ. The scientific testing of utterances.
Cumulative sum analysis. Journal of the Law
Society of Scotland 1991; 357-359.
APPENDIX I
The construction of a CUSUM chart-a worked
example
The construction of a CUSUM chart begins with counting
the numbers of words of the particular class under scrutiny
in each sentence of the text. The identification of words of 2
or 3 letters or words beginning with a vowel is easily
accomplished by computer. The identification of other types
such as nouns or verbs is more difficult unless a sophisticated
computer parsing program is available.
For this example a CUSUM chart will be constructed for the
combined class or "habit" of short words (i.e., 2 or 3 letters)
and words beginning with a vowel. Morton's nomenclature
for this class was "231w + ivw". Note that a word such as
"and" which belongs to both categories does not count
twice. In Table 1 the counts for each sentence of a specimen
text are given. The first column gives the sentence number,
the second column gives the total number of words in the
sentence and the fifth column gives the number of "habit"
words in the sentence.
The next step is to calculate for the whole text the average
number of words per sentence and the average number of
"habit" words per sentence.
568
Average number of words per sentence = -= 21.04
27
Average number of "habit" words per sentence
Now the cumulative sums or CUSUMs themselves can be
calculated. For the sentence-length CUSUM the differences
between the average sentence length (21.04 words) and the
individual sentence lengths are obtained. These are listed in
the third column of Table 1. Then the CUSUM values are
JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95- 106
calculated by adding the difference values in succession. The CUSUM chart produced from this particular example is
shown in Figures 1 and 2 of the main paper.
For sentence 1, CUSUM = -4.04 = -4.04
For sentence 2, CUSUM = -4.04 - 11.04 = -15.08 APPENDIX 2
For sentence 3, CUSUM = -4.04 - 11.04 - 10-04= -25.12 Derivation of the correct CUSUM chart scaling
and so o n . . .. . . factor
The CUSUM values are rounded to the nearest whole
number as listed in the fourth column of Table 1. For the
"habit" CUSUM the calculations are performed in a similar
manner with the resulting values being listed in columns six
and seven of Table 1.
Lastly, the two sets of CUSUM values are plotted as two --- ---- --- -- -
-s .. - -S"+,
lines on the same graph but before this can be done the
"habit" CUSUM values must be multiplied by a scaling
factor. Morton derived his scaling factor from the ranges of
values observed in each CUSUM line. In this example
Sentence length:
, -?I---- /
.. - - - - - - - - - - - - -.a.

maximum CUSUM value = 2

]
0
range is 83
minimum CUSUM value = -81
Habit:
+1
maximum CUSUM value = 0
minimum CUSUM value = -44
} range is M
n Sentence number
FIGURE 9 Schematic remesentation of the two l i e s in a
83 CUSUM chart showing values for two successive sentences only.
Scaling factor = - = 1.89
44 -sentence length CUSUM --.-.
"habit" CUSUM.

TABLE 1 Example of the calculation of a CUSUM chart

Sentence-length CUSUM 231w + sw CUSUM

Sentence No of Difference No of Difference
no words from average CUSUM words from average CUSUM

27
Total

JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-106

For simplicity assume that at some sentence n the two
CUSUM lines meet at a CUSUM value C, as shown
schematically in Figure 9. For the next sentence the
CUSUM value for the sentence length line is given by
+
where L,,,= length of sentence n 1, and L = average
sentence length. The CUSUM value for the habit line is
given by
where W,,,= habit words in sentence n + 1, w = average
habit words per sentence and F = scaling factor.
If the proportion of habit words in sentence n + 1 is exactly
the same as the average proportion within the text as a
whole (i.e., if the observed number of habit words equals
the expected number), then
In these circumstances we require that the two CUSUM
lines do not diverge between sentences n and n + 1 and
therefore
s,,, = H,+l or (L,,, - L) = F . (w,,, - W )
Substituting for W,,,from above gives
i.e., Scaling Factor
average number of words per sentence
average number of habit words per sentence
For the worked example in Appendix 1 the scaling factor
calculated by this formula would be 1-93, which is not far
from Morton's estimate of 1.89 but for the CUSUM chart in
Figure 46, for instance, the values would be rather different
at 1.71 and 1-48 respectively.
JFSS 1993; 33(2): 95-106