Ballpoint ink flakes as indicators of added entries

Examiners were asked to determine if an entry made in a diary had been completed at one time, or if the last sentence of the entry had been added later. Standard non-destructive ink differentiation techniques did not show any differences in the ballpoint pen ink used. Dried flakes of ballpoint pen ink were present in the initial stroke of the questioned sentence, but did not appear elsewhere in the entry. Experiments were undertaken to ascertain if these dried flakes could be attributed to a time delay or some other cause. Experimentation showed that ink flakes occurred only after periods of non-use of the ballpoint pens in the sample. Caution is urged in applying this finding to actual case work.