A new technique for the forensic analysis of text messages may soon be used in court, according to research to be released on Monday at the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool. The technique, which can also be applied to e-mails, chatroom conversations and other electronic messages, makes it possible to determine the likelihood that two messages were written by the same person.

Tim Grant, deputy director of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University, described how linguistic analysis is used in police investigations such as the one triggered by the disappearance of Jenny Nicholl in 2005. Analysis of text messages sent from Jenny Nicholl’s phone showed that they were more likely to have been written by murder suspect David Hodgson.