By Robin Crouch.
Back in the days when I was in school, everyone was writing in blue, and not a single person wrote in black. Then when I first joined the work force, we were told to use black ink because it’s permanent versus blue ink, which is water soluble. Or it could be that the preference for black goes back to the historic inability to copy blue ink.
That said, it may be interesting to take a look at the new preference for blue ink. I was not aware of any actual “ink code” that requires documents to be signed in blue ink, until recently:
For instance, Local Rule 57.5 Ross County, Ohio – All filings must contain original signatures and be written in blue ink. I found out the hard way that failure to do so could result in a reprimand and will most definitely result in resubmitting all your docs with a “blue” signature.
The State of Florida requires documents to be signed in blue in ink to enable them to differentiate between an original signature and a copied signature. They will, however, still record a document signed in black ink.
Because photocopies are so good now, it’s hard to tell the difference between a real signature in black ink, and the copy of one. Original documents are signed in blue to show that it’s the original. Of course, these days color copiers are so good, you’d still have trouble telling the difference between an original and a copy.
