Outside the Perimeter commenter Stephen brings up a good point:
In Microsoft Word, the spacing between number 1s is fixed, at the same spacing as all other numbers, such that they line up when making columns of numbers. The letter l spacing is not fixed, since it is just another letter. Since the letter l is so thin, it has a very small spacing and tends to look like it is practically adjacent to other letters, especially next to other letter ls.This directly refutes my theory that the forger used a lower case "L" instead of a "1" to trick Microsoft Word.
As any good Forensic Wordologist would, I tested my own theory by doing some animated GIF nerd stuff. This picture was made up of two screen shots. The text "111th" in black is a screen shot of the original Bush memo. The text "111th" in red is a screen shot of the number "111th", using all number "1"s, from Microsoft Word. Watch the GIF and you can see that Stephen is right: the character spacing from the Word doc is an almost exact match for the character spacing from the 60 Minutes memo:
This fact does blow part of my theory: That the forger used a lower case "L" in the place of a number "1" to trick Microsoft Word's Autoformat As You Type (AAYT). I now think that the forger was not quite as ignorant as I thought, as they figured out a way to get around AAYT that was not quite as crude. Perhaps he or she used Undo or Backspace after typing in the text and after it automatically superscripted. Either method would remove the automatic superscript and allow the person to forge ahead with the rest of the document.
The dictates of Forensic Wordology, which I am of course making up as I go along, leads me to believe that the forger was at the very least sloppy. Perhaps because he or she was in a hurry.
Finally, as Stephen points out:
So, there are two possibilities, as I see it.
1) These memos were typed on typewriters too ancient to have a separate number
one key, so number ones had to be typed as letter ls. However, the same
typewriter is so sophisticated that it knows what the typist is thinking and
gives proper spacing to the letter l depending on whether you meant to type a
letter l or a number 1.
2) These memos are poor forgeries typed in Microsoft Word.
Congratulations, Stephen, on pushing back the frontiers of Forensic Wordology. Your official certificate welcoming you to the ranks will be on its way today!
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