Electronic vs digital signatures: what each is, and what a drawn signature on a PDF proves

"Electronic signature" and "digital signature" are used interchangeably and mean different things. One is a legal concept — any mark that shows you meant to sign — and the other is a cryptographic mechanism that proves who signed and that nothing changed since. Both are valid, for different jobs. This guide separates them and is honest about what the PDF sign tool gives you.

Electronic signatures: intent

An electronic signature is any electronic process attached to a record by a person intending to sign it: a typed name, a drawn signature, a tick box under "I agree", a scanned signature image, a signature captured on a courier's screen. Its legal force comes from the intent and the record of it — who, when, from where — not from the pixels. This is what DocuSign-style services provide: an audit trail (email, IP, timestamps) around a simple mark.

Digital signatures: cryptography

A digital signature is mathematics. The signer's software computes a hash of the document (Hashing, encryption and encoding) and encrypts it with the signer's private key; anyone with the matching public key — published in a certificate issued by an authority that verified the signer's identity — can decrypt the hash and compare it to the document's. If they match, the document is unchanged since signing and the private key's owner signed it. PDF supports this natively (Adobe's certificate signatures, the EU's PAdES profile), viewers show a green tick or a red warning, and one changed byte invalidates it. It requires a certificate from a trusted issuer, which is the part that costs money and paperwork.

What the law accepts

Most jurisdictions accept simple electronic signatures for most contracts: the US ESIGN Act and UETA (2000), the EU's eIDAS regulation (2014), the UK's Electronic Communications Act. eIDAS defines three tiers — simple, advanced (uniquely linked to the signer, capable of detecting changes) and qualified (a digital signature backed by a government-recognised certificate, legally equivalent to handwriting). The exceptions are the same everywhere: wills, some property deeds, certain family-law and court documents, and anything a specific statute requires in wet ink or before a notary. The question for a given document is not "is an e-signature valid" but "does this document have a special rule", and that is a question for a lawyer, not a tool.

What a drawn signature on a PDF provides

Drawing or typing a signature onto a PDF and saving it produces a simple electronic signature: evidence of intent, embedded in the page as an image or text. It does not prove who drew it, and it does not detect later changes — the file can be edited afterwards like any PDF, and How to redact a PDF so the text is actually gone shows how little a visual layer proves. For the everyday cases — a lease, a permission slip, an NDA between people who know each other, an invoice acknowledgement — that is exactly what has always been provided by a fax with a signature on it, and it is accepted. For high-value or contested documents, add the audit trail of a signing service or use a certificate-based digital signature. The tool's honest promise is that the document never leaves your device, which is itself a security property many signing services can't offer.

Choosing the right kind

• Low stakes, known counterparty: a drawn or typed signature on the PDF, plus the email thread as the record.
• Commercial contracts with strangers: a signing service with an audit trail, or a certificate-based signature.
• Regulated or cross-border documents: a qualified digital signature where the jurisdiction recognises it.
• Documents with a special-form rule: whatever the statute says — ask.

The form filler completes the fields before signing; the metadata tool records the date in the document properties if you want a marker beyond the page. This guide is general information, not legal advice.