How This Single 'M' Almost Ruined a US Presidency

Summary by Krater

This video examines historical document forgeries and explains how font detectives and typography experts use letterforms, typefaces, and metadata to expose them.

From the video

Answers: How do font detectives catch document forgeries?

• document forgery
• typography and fonts
• font detectives
• Hitler Diaries
• Panama Papers
• Operation Sledgehammer
• Killian Memos
• proportional vs monospaced fonts
• Calibri font history
• Times New Roman font history

What it concludes

• The Gothic letters on the Hitler Diaries spelled a Gothic F rather than an AH because the forger confused Gothic letterforms.
• The Calibri font used in the Panama Papers trust document was not commercially available in 2006 when the document was supposedly signed, exposing it as a fake.
• Documents related to Operation Sledgehammer in Turkey used Calibri font references in their hex code despite being dated 2003, before Calibri existed.
• The Killian Memos regarding George W. Bush used proportional Times New Roman font features, such as proportional M's and character kerning, that were impossible on 1970s typewriters.