E signature glossary: the terms on a signing request

What the words on a signing request mean

The vocabulary falls into four groups. First there are the signature types: wet, simple, advanced, qualified and digital, which are levels of assurance rather than different buttons. Second come the statutes that give those types their standing, which differ by country and occasionally by state. Third is the machinery of a request itself: the envelope, the recipient, the signing link, the session and the order the parties sign in. Fourth is the evidence trail, the audit log, the completion certificate, the document hash and the timestamp that let somebody prove months later that the file in front of them is the one that was signed.

Start from the question you are actually asking

If the question is whether a signature will stand up, read the statute pages for the country the contract belongs to, then the pages on witnessing and notarisation, because those are the two places where a paper step is still required. If the question is how to prove who signed, read the identity verification, access code and multi factor pages, then the evidence pages. If the question is how a request behaves in practice, read the envelope, signing session, sequential versus parallel signing and decline pages. The versus pages exist for the pairs people mix up most often, such as a digital signature against an electronic one.

Why the law pages differ from each other

The United States recognises electronic signatures through the federal ESIGN Act alongside state adoptions of UETA. The European Union sets three tiers under eIDAS, which is why the qualified and advanced pages exist at all. Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada each have their own act and their own list of documents that sit outside it, so a page per jurisdiction is the only honest way to answer what a reader can rely on. Read the page for the governing law named in the contract, not the one for the country the signer happens to be sitting in.

Every page in this collection

• Are electronic signatures legal in Canada?

  Canada splits the question between two levels of government and one unusual technical category. Knowing which of the three applies is most of the work.

• Are electronic signatures legal in New Zealand?

  New Zealand consolidated its electronic transactions rules into a single commercial statute in 2017, which is why older guidance points at a repealed act. The tests themselves did not change.

• Are electronic signatures legal in the UK?

  The legal answer settled years ago, yet the practical questions did not. Deeds, witnessing and registry filings are where a United Kingdom signing process still has to slow down.

• Certified PDF against signed PDF

  Readers display the two differently, and the difference explains why one document accepts a second signature and another reports itself broken. The distinction is in the format rather than in the law.

• Do electronic signatures need a witness?

  The habit of adding a witness line to everything comes from templates rather than from law. It is worth knowing which documents actually carry the requirement, because a witness who is not needed adds delay and a witness who is needed and missing can void an execution.

• Drawn vs typed electronic signature

  The choice feels significant because a handwritten shape looks like the real thing and a font does not. What decides a dispute is the record around the mark, and that record is identical either way.

• Notarisation against electronic signature

  People reach for a notary when a document feels important, which is rarely the test. The question is whether a rule, a registry or a foreign authority actually demands the extra step.

• Sequential against parallel signing

  Most documents are sent one way out of habit rather than choice. The test is simple: does anybody's decision depend on seeing what somebody else did.

• Signer vs recipient in an e-signature request

  The two words are used interchangeably in support articles and mean different things in the data. Which roles a tool really offers decides how a multi party document has to be arranged.

• The Electronic Transactions Act in Australia

  Australia has nine of these acts rather than one, and they are close to identical by design. The differences that matter are in the regulations that exclude particular documents.

• Void vs expire on an e-signature request

  Recipients see similar screens for both, and senders often use the words interchangeably. The record keeps them apart, and so should anyone explaining what happened.

• What does countersign mean?

  Offer letters, purchase orders and guarantees usually work this way, with one side committing and the other confirming. Deciding who goes last is a small negotiating choice that people make by accident.

• What does initialling a document mean?

  The habit comes from an era when a contract was loose sheets in a folder and pages could quietly change. Most of what it protected against no longer applies to a sealed electronic file.

• What does signing in counterparts mean?

  The practice is a workaround for a problem the post created and email mostly solved. It still appears in almost every contract, and it still occasionally matters.

• What does tamper evident mean?

  Vendors reach for tamper proof because it sounds stronger, and it describes something no digital file can offer. The weaker sounding word is the accurate one, and it is enough.

• What evidence does an electronic signature produce?

  People picture a signature as one mark on one page, so they picture the proof as one thing too. In a dispute, the mark is rarely what is argued about, and the surrounding record is what settles it.

• What happens when someone declines to sign?

  Declining is the honest ending, and it is far more useful than silence. It gives the sender a reason and a timestamp instead of a document that quietly rots.

• What is a digital signature?

  The phrase gets used for anything applied on a screen, which muddles two different things. This page is about the mathematical kind, the one a PDF reader can verify without asking anyone.

• What is a document hash?

  Hashes turn a vague question about whether a document changed into an exact one. The catch is knowing which version of the file each hash was taken from.

• What is a hash chain?

  It is the cheapest way to make a log defend itself. The idea predates every blockchain marketing page by decades, and it is the part that actually does the work.

• What is a qualified electronic signature (QES)?

  It is the only signature level European law says must be treated the same as a handwritten one across every member state. That guarantee is also why it costs more and takes longer to obtain.

• What is a signature block?

  A signature on its own is a shape. The four lines under it are what tell a reader who made the mark and whether they had the authority to make it.

• What is a signature certificate?

  The cryptography in a signed document is rarely the weak part. Whether anyone should believe the name attached to the key is where the real questions sit.

• What is a signing link?

  Most people treat it as a convenience, a shortcut past a login screen. It is closer to a key cut for one person, and handing it on quietly transfers the ability to sign in their name.

• What is a signing session?

  Three different clocks run in a signing request and people mix them up constantly. The session is the shortest of them, and the only one that resets by verifying again.

• What is a simple electronic signature (SES)?

  Almost every signature collected by an ordinary business sits at this level. It is also the level that benefits most from the records kept around it, because the mark itself carries so little.

• What is a timestamp authority?

  Every signature carries a date, and almost none of them prove anything, because the date came from the signer's own machine. An independent authority is what turns a claim about time into evidence.

• What is a wet signature?

  Plenty of offices still print, sign and scan out of habit rather than obligation. Knowing which documents genuinely need paper is what saves the trip to the printer.

• What is an advanced electronic signature (AES)?

  The four tests read like a checklist, and they are, but each one asks about a different part of the process. Working through them is the quickest way to judge any signing product.

• What is an electronic signature?

  The term covers a surprising range, from a name typed into a box to a cryptographic seal. Treating them as one thing is how people end up with a signature they cannot stand behind later.

• What is an envelope in e-signature software?

  The word turns up in pricing pages and support articles as though everyone already knows it. Understanding what one envelope contains explains most of the rules about what can and cannot be changed later.

• What is an execution block?

  Australian and British documents use the phrase where American ones say signature page. The wording is not decoration: it is what lets the other side rely on the execution.

• What is click-to-sign, and is clickwrap binding?

  Every checkout page and software installer relies on this, and courts have upheld it for decades. The failures are almost never about the click and almost always about what the person could reasonably have seen before pressing it.

• What is consent to do business electronically?

  It looks like a checkbox nobody reads, and it is the hinge the rest of the statute swings on. When consent is missing or unprovable, the electronic record loses the protection the law was meant to give it.

• What is DocMDP?

  It is the setting that decides whether a signed document is finished or still fillable. Most signing problems that look mysterious come down to which level was chosen.

• What is eIDAS?

  Most people meet the regulation through a vendor claim about signature levels. It covers considerably more than signatures, and the parts nobody mentions are often the ones that decide a cross border deal.

• What is identity verification in an e-signature request?

  Nearly every argument about a signature is really an argument about identity. Choosing a method is the one decision in a signing workflow that changes how that argument ends.

• What is in-person signing?

  It exists for the counter, the site visit and the kitchen table, where waiting for somebody to find their inbox is the slowest part of the job. The trade is convenience now against a thinner identity record later.

• What is knowledge based authentication (KBA)?

  It was the standard way to check a stranger online for a decade, and it is now widely treated as a weak control. Understanding why explains a lot about how identity checking has moved on.

• What is LTV in a PDF signature?

  A signature that verifies today can become uncheckable in five years, not because it was forged but because the evidence around it went offline. Long term validation is the fix, and it has to be applied at signing time.

• What is non-repudiation in electronic signing?

  Nothing makes a denial impossible, and any tool that claims otherwise is selling certainty it does not have. What good practice buys is a record that makes the denial expensive to maintain.

• What is the ESIGN Act?

  The Act is shorter and narrower than its reputation suggests. It removes an objection rather than creating a signing standard, and the interesting detail sits in the consumer consent provisions.

• What is two factor authentication for signing?

  The phrase gets attached to any process with two steps in it, which is not the same thing. What matters is whether the two steps could be defeated by the same act.

• What is UETA?

  Most American e-signature questions are answered by state law rather than by the federal statute. This is the state law, and it carries several provisions the federal Act never addressed.

• Why does my signed PDF say validity unknown?

  The warning looks alarming and usually means something quite dull. Reading which of the three states a reader is reporting turns a scary banner into a two minute check.