15 May 2014
"Historians look for anachronisms, whether of language, form, or content. ... Sometimes, for example, it is possible to show that a particular 'hand' did not exist when a document was purportedly written or that printers had not yet designed letters in the form used in a printed text.
"Scholars should focus on the small, the apparently insignificant, in search of clues for falsifications, whether of handwriting [or] literary style ... because a forger will rarely be able perfectly to ape every element of the original and is likely to miss on the smaller, less obvious points."
Martha Howell & Walter Prevenier's FROM RELIABLE SOURCES: AN INTRODUCTION TO HISTORICAL METHODS (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001) is chock full of such thought-provoking guidance for historical researchers. The above is pulled from pages 59-60.