“Just sign it and send it back” is one of the more expensive sentences in office life. Taken literally by someone with no printer, it produces a small crisis: find a printer, print the document, sign it, find a scanner or take a photograph, convert that photograph to a PDF, and email it back. Thirty minutes and two devices to add one squiggle to a page.
The document ends up worse, too. What was a crisp digital file with selectable text comes back as a photograph of paper — larger, blurrier, unsearchable. Every step of the ritual degrades it.
It is almost never necessary. But “signing” describes two genuinely different things, and choosing the wrong one causes its own problems, so it is worth understanding the distinction before reaching for a tool.
Two things called signing
An electronic signature is any mark or action made to indicate agreement. A drawn squiggle, a typed name, a tick in a box, a click on “I accept”. It is a statement of intent captured electronically.
A digital signature is a cryptographic operation. A certificate issued by a recognised authority is used to sign the document’s contents mathematically. Any subsequent change to the file breaks the signature, and the signer’s identity can be verified against the issuing authority. It proves both who signed and that nothing has changed since.
These are not two grades of the same thing. They are different mechanisms answering different questions. An electronic signature says “I agree”. A digital signature says “I agree, this is provably me, and this document is provably unaltered”.
Confusingly, both are called signing, and most software uses the words interchangeably.
Which one do you need?
For the overwhelming majority of everyday documents, an electronic signature is sufficient and legally effective.
Under the United States’ ESIGN Act and UETA, and under the European Union’s eIDAS regulation, a contract cannot be denied legal effect solely because it was signed electronically. Similar provisions exist in most jurisdictions, including under Nepal’s Electronic Transactions Act. A drawn signature on a PDF is the same class of signature the mainstream e-signing platforms produce when you sign with your finger on a phone.
There are real exceptions, and they matter. Wills and testamentary documents, property transfers and deeds, certain family law documents, some court filings, and various notarised instruments are commonly excluded by statute and require wet ink, witnessing, or both. Regulated financial and government filings frequently require a specific certificate-based signature rather than any signature at all.
The practical test is simply to ask the recipient, because they know what their process requires. “Just sign and send it back” almost always means an electronic signature is fine. If they mention a certificate, a signing token, a specific platform, or a qualified signature, you need something else. If the document is high-value or the relationship is adversarial, take advice rather than guessing.
The fastest route for an ordinary document
If an electronic signature is acceptable, the whole job is about a minute.
Draw your signature once. Use a signing tool that lets you draw directly on the page. A trackpad is steadier than a mouse; a phone or tablet with a finger or stylus is better than either. If you are on a desktop and the result looks shaky, open the same page on your phone, sign there, and email yourself the file — the result is noticeably more natural.
Place it where the signature line is. Look at the document first. Contracts usually sign at the bottom of the last page; letters sign below the closing, often mid-page. Aim to sit on the printed line rather than beside it. A signature floating in the margin looks like an afterthought.
Size it like a real signature. Around two and a half inches wide — 180 points — matches what a person writes with a pen. Half the page width looks performative; postage-stamp size looks tentative.
Check the result. Open the signed file and confirm the signature is not sitting on top of text. If it is, run the original through again with a different position. Nothing is lost by trying twice.
Where your signature image goes matters
This is the part that gets least attention and deserves more.
A signature image is a sensitive thing. It is a template for forging your handwriting, and unlike a password you cannot change it. Uploading it to a service that stores it, or letting an app save it for convenience, creates a permanent artefact you no longer control.
Prefer tools that keep the drawing in your browser and forget it when the page closes. The signing tool on this site works that way deliberately: your drawing exists only in the tab, is placed into the PDF in local memory, and is gone on reload. The mild inconvenience — you redraw it each time — is the direct consequence of not storing it, and it is the right trade.
The same reasoning applies to the document. A contract being signed is, by definition, not yet executed, and it usually contains commercial terms, addresses and sometimes payment details. It is one of the clearer cases for not uploading a file to a third party at all.
If you genuinely need a digital signature
Sometimes the answer really is the cryptographic kind, and no drawing tool will do.
You will need a digital certificate from a recognised certificate authority. In many countries these are issued by government-approved providers, sometimes on a physical USB token, and there is usually an identity verification step and a fee. Nepal, India, most EU member states and many others operate national schemes of this kind.
Then you need software that can apply it — Adobe Acrobat, or various dedicated signing applications. The certificate is bound to the document’s contents, and any later edit invalidates the signature, which is the entire point.
This is more effort, and correctly so: it is designed for filings and contracts where proving who signed and that nothing changed genuinely matters. Do not go through it for a delivery authorisation, and do not skip it for a regulated filing.
What about the printed-and-scanned version?
There is one situation where the old ritual still makes sense: when the recipient specifically wants to see a wet signature on paper, because their process requires evidence that a physical document was signed. Some notarial and government processes do.
If that is the case, do it properly rather than grudgingly. Print, sign with a pen, and photograph the page in good daylight — beside a window, square on, filling the frame, using your phone’s document mode. Then convert the photograph to a PDF, rotate it if the camera recorded it sideways, and compress it if there is a size limit. A well-taken document-mode photograph is indistinguishable from a flatbed scan and takes a fraction of the time.
But check first whether it is actually required. In a great many cases the person who said “print, sign and scan” was describing the only method they knew, not a requirement of their process — and a clean electronically signed PDF is both easier for you to produce and easier for them to read.
Sign PDF draws your signature in the browser and never stores it. Nothing is uploaded, which is what you want for both the signature and the contract.