E-Signature Meaning: The Complete Terminology Guide

Q: Is a scanned image of my signature an electronic signature?

Only in context. As a standalone image file it is a digitized signature, and it signs nothing, since anyone holding the file could paste it anywhere. It becomes an electronic signature when the signer applies it to a particular document through a process that records the act.

okdoc · 8/20/2026

TL;DR: An electronic signature (e-signature, e-sign) is any electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign that record. That intent is the whole definition. A typed name, a drawn squiggle, an uploaded image of your handwriting, or a click on an "I Agree" button can all be electronic signatures, provided the signer meant to sign and the act is tied to the document and to a person. A digital signature is something narrower and more technical: a cryptographic operation using a private key and a certificate, often used to seal an electronically signed document. Every digital signature can serve as an electronic signature. Most electronic signatures are not digital signatures.

That is the short answer. The rest of this page is the long one, because "e-signature meaning" is a question people ask for a reason: the vocabulary in this field is a mess. The same object gets four names, two of those names have a precise legal definition that contradicts how salespeople use them, and one of them ("digital signature") means something completely different to a cryptographer than it does to a marketing team.

This guide is the reference. Every term, what it actually means, where the terms overlap, where they genuinely differ, and what the statutes say word for word. If you want the shorter overview first, read what is an e-signature. If you want the mechanics of how the signing process works end to end, read how electronic signatures work.

The definition, stated precisely

An electronic signature is a person's electronic act of adopting a record as their own.

Three components, all of which have to be present:

1. An electronic mark. Data of some kind: characters typed into a field, coordinates of a drawn line, an image file, a recorded click event, a cryptographic value.
2. Association with a specific record. The mark has to be attached to, or "logically associated with," a particular document. A signature floating in space signs nothing.
3. Intent. The person had to mean it. This is the part that turns data into a signature, and it is the part that people leave out when they try to define the term.

Notice what is not in the definition. There is no requirement that it look like handwriting. No requirement that it be encrypted. No requirement that it be made on a particular device, or in a particular file format, or by a particular vendor. The law defines a signature by its function, not by its appearance. This is called the functional equivalence principle, and it is the single idea underneath every electronic signature law on earth.

A pen stroke on paper is also just a functional proxy for intent. It carries no magic. It is evidence that a particular person, at a particular moment, chose to be bound. An electronic signature does the same job with different evidence.

Where the words come from

"Electronic signature" is the formal term. It appears in statute, in regulation, and in court.

"E-signature" is the everyday contraction, formed the same way as e-mail and e-commerce. It means exactly the same thing. It is written variously as e-signature, esignature, and e signature. All three refer to the same concept; the hyphen is a style choice, and no standards body has ever ruled on it.

"E-sign" is the verb form, plus one important proper noun. Lowercase, to e-sign means to sign electronically ("just e-sign it and send it back"). Capitalized as ESIGN, it is the short name of a United States federal statute, the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act of 2000. Context tells you which is meant. If someone says "is that ESIGN compliant," they mean the statute. If they say "can you e-sign this," they mean the verb.

"E-signing" is the gerund, used for the process. "E-signature platform" or "e-signature software" is the tool category.

You will also encounter "electric signature." That one is simply a mistake, a mishearing of electronic. There is no such legal or technical concept, but people say and search for it constantly, and they mean an electronic signature. Likewise, the word signature is one of the more frequently mistyped words in English, so you will see the term rendered with a variety of spellings across the web. They all mean the same thing. Nobody has ever lost a contract dispute over a typo in a search query.

The terminology map

Here is the part people actually come for. Seven terms, sorted from broadest to narrowest.

1. Electronic signature (the umbrella term)

The legal category. Any electronic indication of intent to sign. Everything else in this list is either a subtype of this, a technique used to secure it, or its analog opposite.

Scope: enormous. A typed name qualifies. A click qualifies. Under the statutory language, an electronic sound qualifies, which is why "press 1 to accept" on a phone system has been analyzed as an electronic signature.

2. E-signature / e-sign / e-signing

Informal contractions of the above. Zero difference in meaning. If a vendor tells you their "e-signature" is different from an "electronic signature," they are selling you a distinction that does not exist in law.

3. Digital signature (a cryptographic method, not a legal category)

This is the term that causes the most confusion, and it deserves its own section below. Briefly: a digital signature is a mathematical scheme that uses asymmetric cryptography to prove that a specific private key signed a specific block of data, and that the data has not changed since. It is a technique. It is frequently used to implement or protect an electronic signature, but the two words are not synonyms.

The confusion is compounded by the fact that in casual business English, and in several other languages, "digital signature" is simply the everyday phrase for signing a document online. In Hebrew, for instance, חתימה דיגיטלית is what almost everyone says, even when they mean a simple e-signature. So when you read "digital signature," you have to decide from context whether the writer means the cryptographic primitive or the ordinary act of signing on a screen. Our own digital signature page covers both senses.

4. Digitized signature / scanned signature

An image of a handwritten signature. Someone signs a page, scans or photographs it, and the resulting PNG or JPEG gets pasted into documents.

By itself, a digitized signature is not an electronic signature in any meaningful sense, because it carries no intent and no association with a particular record. It is a picture. Anyone who has the image file can paste it onto anything. It is the digital equivalent of a rubber stamp left on a desk.

A digitized signature becomes an electronic signature when the signer applies it themselves, to a specific document, in a process that records that they did so. The image is the visual; the surrounding record is the signature. This distinction is the reason emailing around a PDF with a pasted signature graphic is weaker evidence than a signature applied through a signing platform, even though the two look identical on the page.

5. Wet signature (the analog baseline)

"Wet signature," or wet-ink signature, means a signature made with a physical pen on physical paper. The name comes from the ink being literally wet at the moment of signing. The term did not exist before electronic signing did; it was coined retroactively, the way people started saying "acoustic guitar" only after electric ones showed up.

A wet signature is not inherently stronger than an electronic one. In a dispute, a wet signature has to be authenticated too, usually by testimony or by a handwriting expert, and handwriting comparison is famously unreliable. A well-recorded electronic signature typically arrives with more evidence attached, not less: a timestamp, an IP address, an email address that had to be reachable, and a hash of the exact bytes that were on screen.

6. Click-to-accept / clickwrap

A signature made by activating a control: pressing a button labeled "I Accept," ticking a checkbox next to terms, or clicking through a flow that clearly presents the terms first. In U.S. practice this is often called clickwrap, in contrast with browsewrap (terms merely linked at the bottom of a page, with no affirmative act).

Clickwrap is a genuine electronic signature when the presentation makes the act of assent unambiguous. Browsewrap frequently fails, not because clicking is a weak mechanism, but because there was no act to point at. Again: the mechanism is not the issue, the evidence of intent is.

7. Qualified electronic signature (a regulated, top-tier category)

A European legal term of art, defined by the eIDAS Regulation, for an advanced electronic signature created on certified hardware using a certificate issued by an accredited trust service provider. It is the only category anywhere that is granted automatic equivalence to a handwritten signature by statute. Details below.

The map in one table

| Term | What it is | Legal category or technique? | Requires cryptography? | |---|---|---|---| | Electronic signature | Any electronic act showing intent to sign | Legal category | No | | E-signature / e-sign | Contraction of the above | Same category | No | | Simple electronic signature (SES) | eIDAS baseline tier | Legal category (EU) | No | | Advanced electronic signature (AdES) | eIDAS tier with identity + tamper detection | Legal category (EU) | In practice, yes | | Qualified electronic signature (QES) | AdES on certified device with qualified certificate | Legal category (EU) | Yes | | Digital signature | Asymmetric-key signing of a data hash | Technique | Yes, by definition | | Digitized / scanned signature | An image of handwriting | Neither | No | | Wet signature | Pen on paper | The analog baseline | No | | Click-to-accept / clickwrap | Assent by activating a control | Implementation of an e-signature | No | | Electronic seal | eIDAS equivalent for organizations, not people | Legal category (EU) | Yes |

Why "digital signature" has a specific technical meaning

Skip this section if you only need the business definition. Read it if you want to stop being confused by the term forever.

A digital signature is built out of three ingredients.

A key pair. The signer holds two mathematically related keys: a private key, which never leaves their control, and a public key, which anyone may have. What one key locks, only the other can unlock. This is asymmetric or public-key cryptography, in contrast to symmetric cryptography where both sides share one secret.

A hash. Before signing, the document is run through a cryptographic hash function such as SHA-256, which reduces any input of any size to a fixed-length digest (256 bits, usually written as 64 hexadecimal characters). Hashes have two properties that matter here: the same input always produces the same digest, and changing a single byte anywhere in the input produces a completely different digest. A hash is therefore a compact fingerprint of the exact bytes of a file.

A certificate. A public key on its own is an anonymous number. A digital certificate (typically in the X.509 format) binds a public key to an identity, and is itself signed by a Certificate Authority (CA) that vouches for that binding. The web of CAs, certificates, revocation lists and policies is collectively called PKI, Public Key Infrastructure.

Put them together and the operation is: hash the document, sign the hash with the private key, and attach the resulting value plus the certificate to the file. To verify, a recipient hashes the document themselves, uses the public key from the certificate to recover the signed hash, and compares. If the two match, two facts are proven at once: the holder of that private key signed this, and not one byte has changed since.

That is what a digital signature is. Note what it proves and what it does not. It proves integrity (the file is unaltered) and authenticity relative to a key (this private key was used). It does not, by itself, prove that a human being read the document and intended to be bound by it. Intent comes from the process around the signature, not from the mathematics.

This is why the two concepts are complementary rather than competing. In a modern signing platform, the electronic signature is the signer's act (typing, drawing, clicking) plus the record of that act, and the digital signature is the cryptographic seal applied to the resulting PDF so that any later tampering is detectable. When a finished document from [okdoc](/) is sealed, that seal is a digital signature in the technical sense; the customer's act of signing is the electronic signature in the legal sense. Both are present, doing different jobs.

A few adjacent terms you will meet in this area:

PAdES (PDF Advanced Electronic Signatures): the European standard for embedding signatures inside PDF files. Its siblings are CAdES for generic data and XAdES for XML.
Timestamp authority (TSA): an independent service that cryptographically attests to when a signature existed, so validity does not depend on the signer's clock.
LTV (Long-Term Validation): embedding revocation and certificate data inside the document so the signature can still be verified years later, after certificates expire.
Electronic seal: under eIDAS, the organizational counterpart to a signature. A signature belongs to a natural person; a seal belongs to a legal person, such as a company issuing invoices.

What the law says the words mean

Definitions in statute are the closest thing this field has to bedrock. Here they are, quoted.

United States: the ESIGN Act

The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, enacted in 2000, defines the term at 15 U.S.C. § 7006(5):

"The term 'electronic signature' means an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record."

Read that carefully, because almost every popular misconception dies on it.

"sound, symbol, or process" — not "image," not "signature-looking thing." A sound counts. A process counts.
"attached to or logically associated with" — the mark does not have to be visually on the page. Data linked to the record by the system is enough.
"executed or adopted" — you may create a new mark, or adopt an existing one.
"with the intent to sign the record" — the operative clause. Everything else is mechanism.

ESIGN's central rule, at § 7001(a), is a non-discrimination rule rather than a validation rule. A signature, contract or record "may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form." The statute does not make anything valid that would otherwise be invalid; it removes electronic form as a reason for invalidity. If a contract would fail for lack of consideration on paper, it fails electronically too.

ESIGN also imposes a consumer consent procedure at § 7001(c) for records that some other law requires to be provided in writing to a consumer. Before delivering those electronically, the business has to disclose the right to receive paper, any fees, the hardware and software requirements, and how to withdraw consent, and the consumer has to consent in a way that reasonably demonstrates they can access the format. That disclosure is why signing platforms show an electronic records consent notice; okdoc's is published at /e-sign-disclosure.

United States: UETA

The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act is the model state law, promulgated in 1999 and adopted in nearly every U.S. state (New York instead enacted its own Electronic Signatures and Records Act). Its definition at § 2(8) is nearly identical:

"'Electronic signature' means an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record."

The official comments to UETA are worth knowing about, because they give concrete examples of what the drafters had in mind, including a name typed at the end of an email message, and a header identifying the sender. The drafters were deliberately expansive. Their concern was that a narrow definition would freeze the law around whatever technology existed in 1999.

UETA adds two more principles that answer questions people ask constantly. First, it is technology-neutral: no particular method is mandated or blessed. Second, it applies only to parties who have agreed to conduct the transaction electronically, though that agreement may be inferred from the circumstances.

The exclusions nobody mentions

You will see the claim "legally binding in all 50 states" on a lot of e-signature marketing. Treat it as a red flag, because both ESIGN and UETA carve out categories.

ESIGN § 7003 excludes, among others:

wills, codicils and testamentary trusts;
matters of family law such as adoption and divorce;
most of the Uniform Commercial Code (with stated exceptions);
court orders, notices and official court documents;
notices of cancellation or termination of utility services;
notices of default, acceleration, repossession, foreclosure, eviction, or the right to cure, under a credit agreement secured by a primary residence, or under a rental agreement for one;
cancellation or termination of health or life insurance benefits;
product recall notices, and documents required to accompany the transport of hazardous materials.

State law adds its own variations, and specialized regimes exist for particular instruments (ESIGN § 7021 governs "transferable records," the electronic analog of a negotiable promissory note). None of this makes electronic signing exotic or risky. Commercial contracts, NDAs, proposals, service agreements, employment paperwork and consent forms are all squarely inside the permitted zone. But the honest sentence is: e-signature platforms are designed to support legally binding electronic signatures under ESIGN and UETA, and a defined list of document types is excluded. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not read the statute. For a fuller treatment, see are electronic signatures legally valid.

European Union: eIDAS and the three tiers

Regulation (EU) No 910/2014, known as eIDAS, governs electronic identification and trust services across the EU. Article 3(10) defines the base term:

"'electronic signature' means data in electronic form which is attached to or logically associated with other data in electronic form and which is used by the signatory to sign."

Shorter than the American definition, and notice that intent is folded into the phrase "used by the signatory to sign." Article 3(9) defines the signatory as a natural person who creates an electronic signature, which is why organizations get seals instead.

eIDAS then defines a ladder of three levels. This is the single most useful mental model in the whole field.

SES, simple (or "basic") electronic signature. The Article 3(10) baseline. Any electronic data used to sign. A typed name in a form, a click, a drawn signature. No identity assurance required.

AdES, advanced electronic signature. Article 3(11) defines it by reference to Article 26, which sets four requirements. The signature must be:

"(a) uniquely linked to the signatory; (b) capable of identifying the signatory; (c) created using electronic signature creation data that the signatory can, with a high level of confidence, use under his sole control; and (d) linked to the data signed therewith in such a way that any subsequent change in the data is detectable."

Requirement (d) is why an AdES in practice involves cryptography: "any subsequent change is detectable" is precisely what a hash gives you.

QES, qualified electronic signature. Article 3(12):

"'qualified electronic signature' means an advanced electronic signature that is created by a qualified electronic signature creation device, and which is based on a qualified certificate for electronic signatures."

QES is the regulated summit: a certified secure device (a smart card, a token, or a certified remote signing service) and a certificate from a qualified trust service provider on a national trusted list, issued after verified identity checks.

The legal effect of the ladder is set out in Article 25. Paragraph 1 gives the non-discrimination rule familiar from ESIGN: an electronic signature "shall not be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings solely on the grounds that it is in an electronic form or that it does not meet the requirements for qualified electronic signatures." Paragraph 2 gives QES something stronger: a qualified electronic signature "shall have the equivalent legal effect of a handwritten signature."

So an SES is admissible and can be perfectly enforceable; you may simply have to prove more about it. A QES arrives pre-proven. Most commercial agreements in Europe are concluded with SES or AdES, and QES is reserved for the narrow set of transactions where national law demands it. eIDAS was amended in 2024 by Regulation (EU) 2024/1183, which adds the European Digital Identity Wallet framework; the signature definitions above were not disturbed.

Elsewhere

The same architecture repeats internationally, which is not a coincidence: most modern statutes descend from the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce (1996) and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Signatures (2001).

United Kingdom: section 7 of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 makes electronic signatures admissible, and the retained UK version of eIDAS keeps the three-tier structure. The Law Commission's 2019 report confirmed that electronic signatures are valid for the great majority of documents under English law.
Israel: the Electronic Signature Law, 5761-2001, recognizes electronic signatures generally, with a secure electronic signature category that carries enhanced evidentiary weight.
Canada: PIPEDA at the federal level, plus provincial electronic commerce acts, with a distinct "secure electronic signature" concept for certain federal purposes.
India, Australia, Singapore, Brazil, and most of Latin America and Asia all have comparable statutes with a baseline tier and a certificate-backed higher tier.

The vocabulary shifts slightly across borders. The structure does not.

Intent to sign: the principle everything rests on

Read the definitions again and one word does all the work: intent.

This is why a typed name can be exactly as valid as a hand-drawn one. Neither is stronger evidence of identity than the other; both are trivially forgeable in isolation. What makes either count is that a person, presented with a document, deliberately performed an act that a reasonable observer would read as "I agree to this."

Practically, intent gets established by the design of the signing flow, not by the shape of the mark:

The document is presented in full before the signing control is available.
The signing control is unambiguous ("Sign," "I Agree"), and distinct from ordinary navigation.
The signer takes an affirmative action they had to choose to take.
The system records that action, with the time, and with the document version it applied to.
The signer receives a copy.

A drawn signature has one genuine advantage, and it is psychological rather than legal: it feels like signing, and it produces a page that looks like the artifact everyone expects. That matters for adoption. It does not add legal weight on its own.

Conversely, the classic failures of intent are not about the mark either. They are pre-ticked checkboxes, terms hidden behind a link nobody had to open, or a "signature" applied by someone other than the named signer. In each case the mark exists and the intent does not.

The forms an e-signature can take

All of these are electronic signatures when applied by the signer to a specific document with intent:

Typed. The signer types their name, usually rendered in a script typeface. The most common form worldwide and the most accessible one, since it works with a keyboard, a screen reader, and any device.
Drawn. The signer draws with a finger, stylus, mouse or trackpad. The captured artifact is a set of stroke coordinates rendered to an image.
Uploaded image. The signer supplies a picture of their handwritten signature. Legally identical to the drawn version, provided they uploaded and applied it.
Click-to-accept. A single affirmative click on a clearly labeled control. Standard for terms of service, policy acknowledgments, and internal approvals.
Checkbox. Ticking a box next to a specific statement. Valid when the box is not pre-ticked and the statement is adjacent and legible.
Initials. Applied per clause or per page, typically alongside a full signature elsewhere. A convention inherited from paper; legally, initials are a signature if intent is present.
Biometric capture. Some systems record pressure, velocity and stroke timing on a signature pad. This is a richer form of the drawn signature, not a separate category.
Certificate-based signing. The signer authenticates with a certificate held on a card, token or in a qualified remote service. This is where the electronic signature and the digital signature become the same act.
Electronic sound. Rare but explicitly covered by ESIGN. A recorded verbal assent or a keypad response in a phone system.

You can try the typed and drawn forms in about a minute without an account at sign a PDF free.

What an electronic signature is NOT

Six misconceptions, each of which sends people to a search box.

It is not a picture of your handwriting. The image is decoration. Strip it away and the signature still exists in the record. Add it to a document without the surrounding process and no signature exists at all. This is the most consequential misunderstanding in the whole subject.

It is not automatically a digital signature. Different concept, described above. A platform can produce an electronic signature with no cryptography anywhere in it, and that signature can be enforceable.

It is not a scan of a signed page. Printing, signing, scanning and emailing back produces a scanned wet signature. It is often accepted commercially, and it is evidentially poor: no timestamp, no verified identity, no tamper detection, and a downgraded copy of the original.

It is not less binding than pen and paper. The non-discrimination rules in ESIGN § 7001(a) and eIDAS Article 25(1) exist precisely to foreclose the argument "it was electronic, therefore it does not count."

It is not valid for absolutely everything. See the exclusions above. Wills, certain family law matters, some court filings, and specific notices are carved out in the U.S., and national law elsewhere reserves certain acts for QES or for a notary.

It is not the same as a notarized signature. Notarization is an independent officer attesting to identity and voluntariness. Some jurisdictions permit RON, remote online notarization, which is notarization performed over video, but that is a separate legal act layered on top of a signature, not a feature of the signature itself.

Electronic signature notation: how it appears on the page

"Electronic signature notation" refers to the conventions for indicating in the text of a document that a signature was applied electronically. Several conventions coexist.

The /s/ convention. In United States court filings and many formal documents, an electronic signature is written as a forward slash, the letter s, a forward slash, then the name:

``` /s/ Jane Q. Doe Jane Q. Doe Counsel for Plaintiff ```

This is a conformed signature: a typed notation standing in for a handwritten one. Federal and state e-filing systems have used it for decades, and the account credentials used to file supply the authentication.

The "signed electronically by" block. Signing platforms typically stamp a machine-generated block under or beside the signature: the signer's name, email, the timestamp with time zone, and often a document or envelope identifier. This is the notation that lets a reader of the finished PDF see the signature's provenance without opening the audit trail.

The certificate panel. In a PDF carrying a cryptographic seal, the reader (Adobe Acrobat and others) displays a validation banner reporting whether the document has been altered since signing and who the certificate belongs to. This is generated by the software from the embedded signature, not typed by anyone.

Conformed signature lines generally. Outside court practice, drafters sometimes use `[Signed]`, `By: /s/ Name`, or a typed name above a signature rule. Contract law does not prescribe a format. The notation is a courtesy to the reader; the signature is what happened in the record.

"Electronic signature" as a defined term in the document. Well-drafted contracts include an electronic signature clause stating that the parties agree to sign electronically and that electronic counterparts have the same effect as originals. This is not required for validity in most cases, but it removes an argument, and under UETA it settles the "agreement to transact electronically" element explicitly.

The vocabulary around the signature

These are the terms you will meet on any signing platform, defined once.

Audit trail. The chronological record of everything that happened to the document: created, sent, delivered, opened, viewed, signed, completed, with actor, timestamp and IP address for each event. The audit trail is where the evidence of a signature lives. It is not a nicety. If a signature is ever questioned, the audit trail is the answer.

Certificate of completion. A generated summary document, usually appended to or accompanying the signed PDF, that presents the audit trail in readable form: every signer, their email, their IP, when each acted, and the document's identifiers. Sometimes called a signature certificate or completion certificate. Do not confuse it with a digital certificate, which is the cryptographic object described earlier. Same word, unrelated meanings.

Tamper-evident seal. The cryptographic seal applied to the finished document so any later modification is detectable. "Tamper-evident" rather than "tamper-proof" is the correct term, and the distinction is real: nothing prevents someone from editing a file, but the seal ensures the edit cannot go unnoticed.

Hash / SHA-256. The fixed-length fingerprint of the document's exact bytes, described above. When a platform says it stores the document hash, it means it can prove at any future point whether a given file is byte-for-byte the one that was signed.

OTP verification. A one-time password, a short numeric code sent by SMS or email that the signer must enter before signing. This upgrades identity assurance from "whoever received the link" to "whoever controls that phone number or inbox," and it is the cheapest meaningful step up in evidentiary strength available. It is available on every okdoc document, on every plan.

Signer authentication. The general category OTP belongs to. Other methods: access codes shared out of band, knowledge-based questions, government ID verification, single sign-on, and certificate-based authentication. The right level is a function of what the document is worth and what a dispute would cost.

Multi-signer. A document requiring signatures from more than one party. Each signer gets their own fields, their own link, and their own audit trail entries. Signers can also hold different roles: signer, approver, or copy recipient (often labeled CC), who receives the finished document without signing.

Sequential signing (signing order). Signers are invited in a defined order; signer two is only notified after signer one completes. The opposite is parallel signing, where everyone is invited at once. Sequential order matters when one party's signature is conditional on another's, or when an internal approval must precede an external send.

Envelope. Common industry jargon for the container holding one or more documents sent for signature as a single transaction. The word comes from the paper metaphor and has no legal meaning.

Fields / tags / anchors. The placed regions where a signer types, draws, dates or checks. Placing them by hand is the tedious part of preparing a document, which is why field auto-mapping on an uploaded PDF is a meaningful time saver.

Timestamp. The recorded moment of an event. A trusted or qualified timestamp is one issued by an independent time-stamping authority and cryptographically bound to the document, so it does not rely on any participant's clock.

Non-repudiation. The property that a signer cannot credibly deny having signed. It is produced by the combination of identity assurance, intent evidence and integrity protection, not by any single feature.

Where the term shows up in practice

The word means the same thing everywhere. What changes is which tier and which supporting evidence is appropriate.

Business contracts and proposals. Service agreements, statements of work, NDAs, quotes, purchase orders, partnership agreements. This is the volume case, and a simple or advanced electronic signature with a full audit trail is the norm. See contracts and quotes and proposals.

HR and employment. Offer letters, employment agreements, policy acknowledgments, onboarding forms, equipment receipts, annual compliance sign-offs. High volume, low individual value, heavy reliance on bulk sending and on proof of delivery as much as proof of signature. Employee acknowledgments are often clickwrap rather than drawn signatures. See e-signatures for HR teams.

Real estate. Listing agreements, buyer representation agreements, lease agreements, disclosures and addenda are routinely e-signed. The higher-formality end of the transaction is where the exclusions bite: certain notices under credit agreements secured by a primary residence are carved out of ESIGN, some recording offices have their own requirements, and deeds and mortgages often involve notarization or RON. Leases and brokerage paperwork are ordinary e-signature territory. See realtors and rentals and property management.

Healthcare. Patient intake, consent to treat, privacy acknowledgments, financial responsibility forms and telehealth consents. In the U.S., regulated electronic records and signatures in FDA-covered contexts fall under 21 CFR Part 11, which imposes its own requirements for closed and open systems, and clinical research adds further layers. Ordinary clinic paperwork does not. See clinics.

Finance and insurance. Account opening, loan applications, disclosures, policy applications and beneficiary changes. Heavily regulated, heavily audited, and the place where identity verification requirements are strictest. Certain instruments (negotiable notes) are handled as transferable records with additional control requirements rather than as ordinary signed documents. See mortgage brokers and accountants.

Professional services and agencies. Engagement letters, retainers, scope changes and renewals. This is where signing overlaps with selling, and where the interesting question is usually not "did they sign" but "are they going to." See agencies, lawyers, and freelancers.

Where okdoc fits

okdoc is a Proposal-to-Close platform: Create → Send → Track → Sign → Close. Signing is one beat of five, and deliberately so.

The beat worth naming here is Track, because it is the one most people have never seen. From the moment a document goes out, you can see whether it was opened, how many times, how long the reader stayed, how much time they spent on each individual page, how far they scrolled, where they clicked, and whether the deal is running hot, cooling, or abandoned. A WhatsApp alert fires the instant the client opens it. All of that is free on every plan, including FREE at ₪0 with 5 deals a month; CLOSE is ₪199 for 50 deals and AGENCY is ₪499 for 200.

On the terminology of this article: what okdoc captures when someone signs is an electronic signature in the ESIGN and eIDAS sense, with the intent, identity and association evidence recorded in an audit trail, and the finished PDF carries a cryptographic tamper-evident seal, which is a digital signature in the technical sense. Both concepts, doing their separate jobs, exactly as described above. You can start on the free plan at /signup, or compare the plans at /pricing.

Frequently asked questions

What does e-signature mean, in one sentence? An e-signature is an electronic act, such as typing a name, drawing a mark or clicking an agreement button, performed by a person with the intent to sign a specific document, and recorded in a way that ties the act to that person and that document.

Does "e-sign" mean the same thing as "electronic signature"? Yes, when written in lowercase as a verb or contraction. Capitalized as ESIGN, it refers instead to the U.S. Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act of 2000.

What is the difference between an electronic signature and a digital signature? An electronic signature is a legal concept: any electronic indication of intent to sign. A digital signature is a cryptographic technique that uses a private key and a certificate to prove that specific data was signed and has not changed. Digital signatures are often used to secure electronic signatures, but most electronic signatures do not involve one, and a digital signature by itself proves integrity rather than intent.

Is a typed name really a valid signature? Yes, if the person typed it themselves, on a specific document, intending to sign it, and the system recorded that they did. The statutory definitions cover any "sound, symbol, or process." Nothing in them requires the mark to resemble handwriting.

Is a scanned image of my signature an electronic signature? Only in context. As a standalone image file it is a digitized signature, and it signs nothing, since anyone holding the file could paste it anywhere. It becomes an electronic signature when the signer applies it to a particular document through a process that records the act.

What is a wet signature? Ink on paper. The term was coined after electronic signing existed, to name the thing that came before. A wet signature is not inherently more reliable; it also has to be proven, usually by testimony or handwriting comparison.

What does "electronic signature notation" mean? The convention for showing on the face of a document that it was signed electronically. The most standardized form is the `/s/ Name` conformed signature used in U.S. court filings; signing platforms typically add a generated block with the signer's name, email and timestamp instead.

What are SES, AdES and QES? The three eIDAS tiers. SES is any electronic signature. AdES adds four requirements from Article 26: unique link to the signatory, capability to identify them, sole control of the signature creation data, and detectability of any later change to the signed data. QES is an AdES created on a certified device with a qualified certificate, and it is the only tier the regulation grants automatic equivalence to a handwritten signature.

Is a checkbox a signature? It can be. A ticked box next to a clear, legible statement, ticked by the user rather than pre-checked, is an affirmative act showing intent. A pre-ticked box is not, because the user did nothing.

Are electronic signatures valid for every document? No. ESIGN § 7003 excludes categories including wills and testamentary trusts, certain family law matters, most of the UCC, court documents, utility termination notices, certain default and foreclosure notices related to a primary residence, health and life insurance termination notices, product recalls and hazardous materials documentation. National law elsewhere reserves certain acts for a qualified signature or a notary. Ordinary commercial agreements are not affected.

Do both parties need the same software to sign? No. The signer opens a link in a browser. No account, no installation and no matching software is required on their side.

What is the difference between an electronic signature and an electronic seal? Under eIDAS, a signature belongs to a natural person and expresses that person's intent. A seal belongs to a legal person, an organization, and attests to the origin and integrity of a document such as an invoice. Different definitions, different legal effect.

Does an electronic signature need to be encrypted to be valid? No. Validity turns on intent, attribution and association with the record. Cryptography strengthens the evidence, particularly integrity, and is required at the AdES and QES tiers in the EU, but the baseline legal definition does not demand it.

What is the difference between authentication and a signature? Authentication answers "who is this person." A signature answers "did this person intend to be bound by this document." A signing flow needs both, which is why OTP verification and access codes exist alongside the signature field itself.

Why do people say "electric signature"? It is a mishearing of "electronic signature." There is no separate concept; anyone using the phrase means an ordinary electronic signature.

How do I actually get a document signed? Upload or generate the document, place the fields, add the signer's email or phone number, and send. The signer opens the link, reviews, signs, and both sides receive the sealed copy with the audit trail attached. Step by step, that is how electronic signatures work. To try it on a PDF right now, use sign a PDF free.