What Is an Electronic Signature?

The short definition

An electronic signature (or "e-signature") is any electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record, used by a person with the intent to sign it. In practice, that covers a typed name at the bottom of an email, a drawn signature on a touchscreen, a checkbox saying "I agree," or an image of your handwritten signature dropped into a PDF.

How it's different from a "digital signature"

The two terms are often used interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. An electronic signature describes intent — the fact that someone signed something electronically. A digital signature is a specific cryptographic technique (using public-key infrastructure) that can be used to implement an electronic signature with strong tamper-evidence and identity verification built in. Every digital signature is a kind of electronic signature; not every electronic signature uses digital-signature technology.

How electronic signatures are typically created

• Drawing a signature by hand using a mouse, trackpad, or touchscreen.
• Typing your name and rendering it in a signature-style font.
• Uploading a scanned or photographed image of your handwritten signature.
• Clicking to accept, common in software terms-of-service and click-wrap agreements.

SignScribe supports the first three methods — draw, type, or upload — all processed locally in your browser.

Are they legally valid?

In most countries, yes, for the vast majority of everyday documents. See our full breakdown in are electronic signatures legal? for the specific laws involved and the narrow categories of documents that still require a wet-ink or notarized signature.

A brief history of the electronic signature

The concept predates the internet by decades. Telegraph operators in the 1800s were already debating whether a transmitted signature carried the same weight as one written by hand, and by the mid-20th century, fax-transmitted signatures were routinely accepted in business. What changed with the rise of email and web forms in the 1990s was scale: suddenly, ordinary consumers — not just businesses with fax machines — needed a way to indicate agreement to something they'd never touch with a pen. That shift is what pushed governments to formalize e-signature law, culminating in the U.S. ESIGN Act (2000) and the EU's original e-signature directive, later replaced by eIDAS (2014).

Electronic signature vs. digital signature vs. electronic seal

These three terms get used loosely and interchangeably online, which causes real confusion. Here's how they actually differ:

SignScribe produces electronic signatures in the broad legal sense — images that represent your intent to sign — rather than certificate-based digital signatures. For the overwhelming majority of everyday agreements, that's exactly the right tool for the job.

What makes an electronic signature legally meaningful

An image alone doesn't create a binding signature — what matters legally is the surrounding context. Courts and regulators generally look for three things: a clear intent by the signer to be bound by the document, evidence that the signer consented to transact electronically rather than on paper, and a reliable link between the signature and the specific record being signed (often established through timestamps, IP logs, or the platform's own audit trail). A hand-drawn squiggle and an elaborate cursive font carry exactly the same legal weight in the eyes of the law, so long as those three conditions are met.

Common everyday uses

• Freelance and employment contracts signed and returned within minutes instead of days.
• Lease agreements and rental applications completed entirely online before move-in.
• School and permission forms sent home digitally and returned the same evening.
• Delivery and courier confirmations, often captured directly on a handheld scanner.
• Personal letters, cards, and creative work signed off with a distinctive typed or drawn flourish.

How SignScribe fits into this picture

SignScribe is deliberately simple: it helps you draw, type, or upload a clean signature image, entirely inside your browser, with nothing ever uploaded to a server. That makes it well suited to the everyday cases above — contracts, forms, PDFs, and documents where a straightforward electronic signature is all that's legally required. It isn't a substitute for a certificate-based digital signature platform in the rarer cases that specifically demand one (some regulated filings, for instance), but for the vast majority of paperwork most people handle, an electronic signature image is both sufficient and standard practice.