Notarial acts are formal verifications performed by an authorized official—most often a notary public—that confirm a signer’s identity, willingness, and awareness of what they’re signing. They exist to insert a neutral third party between you and a transaction so courts, recording offices, and agencies can rely on the document later. The type of act your document needs is dictated by the document itself or by the agency that will receive it, and asking for the wrong one is the most common reason a notarization gets rejected.
The Five Common Types
Most notarizations fall into one of five categories. The differences are not cosmetic. A document that calls for a jurat but receives an acknowledgment can be bounced by the recording office or challenged in court.
Acknowledgment
An acknowledgment is the most frequently requested notarial act. You appear before the notary and declare that you signed the document voluntarily. The notary confirms your identity and your willingness; the notary does not need to watch you sign. You can show up with a document already signed. Real estate deeds, powers of attorney, and trust documents commonly require acknowledgments. The giveaway language on the certificate is “acknowledged before me.”
Jurat
A jurat goes further. The notary must watch you sign the document in real time and then administer an oath or affirmation that the contents are truthful, placing you under penalty of perjury. The certificate language typically reads “subscribed and sworn to before me.” Affidavits and sworn statements almost always require jurats. Because the signing has to happen in front of the notary, don’t sign a jurat document in advance.
Oath or Affirmation
Oaths and affirmations are standalone acts where a person makes a formal pledge to tell the truth. An oath is a solemn promise referencing a higher power; an affirmation is the secular equivalent, a pledge on your own honor. The choice is yours, and both carry identical legal weight and the same perjury exposure. These come up when swearing in a witness, administering the pledge for public office, or when a document calls for a sworn verbal statement rather than a written one.
Copy Certification
A copy certification is a notary’s written confirmation that a photocopy is a true and complete reproduction of an original. It is useful when you need to prove the contents of a diploma, a private contract, or another document you can’t part with. The notary compares copy to original, confirms they match, and attaches a certificate. Not every jurisdiction allows notaries to certify all document types. Birth certificates, death certificates, and other vital records are often excluded because certified copies have to come from the issuing agency itself.
Signature Witnessing
When a notary witnesses or attests a signature, they observe the person signing and certify one thing: that they personally watched this individual put pen to paper. There is no oath about the document’s truthfulness, as there is with a jurat, and the signing cannot happen outside the notary’s presence, as it can with an acknowledgment. This act appears where the law requires proof that the signing happened but doesn’t demand a sworn statement about content.
Signature by Mark
When a signer is physically unable to write their name, most jurisdictions allow a mark such as an “X” in place of a full signature. Requirements vary significantly. Many states require one or more witnesses present when the mark is made. A common practice is for a witness or the notary to write the signer’s name near the mark, and witnesses may also need to sign the notary’s journal. The specific rules often appear in civil code provisions separate from the main notary statutes, so check your state before the appointment.
Picking the Right Act Is Your Job, Not the Notary’s
This is where most problems start. The notary cannot choose the type of act for you. Doing so would cross into unauthorized legal advice. The document usually tells you what it needs through its printed certificate language. “Subscribed and sworn to before me” means a jurat. “Acknowledged before me” means an acknowledgment. If the document doesn’t specify, call the agency that will receive it and ask. Showing up without that information wastes the appointment.
What You Need to Bring and How the Appointment Runs
Every notarial act begins with identity verification. You’ll need a current, unexpired government-issued photo ID that contains both a photograph and a signature. State driver’s licenses, state ID cards, U.S. passports, and military IDs are the most universally accepted. Expired identification is rejected regardless of how recently it lapsed.
Physical presence is mandatory for traditional notarizations. You must be in the same room as the notary at the time of the act. The notary also evaluates whether you appear to understand the document and whether you’re acting voluntarily. If the notary suspects confusion or pressure from someone else in the room, they should refuse to proceed.
Fill out the document before the notarization begins. A notary should decline to notarize anything with blank fields, because those spaces could be filled in later with information you never agreed to. If a section is intentionally blank, draw a line through it.
The sequence of the appointment itself matters, especially for jurats. The notary examines your ID, confirms you understand the document and are signing willingly, and administers any required oath. For jurats and signature witnessing, you then sign in front of the notary. A signature placed before the appointment defeats the purpose of those acts. For acknowledgments, prior signing is fine. After the act, the notary completes the certificate, affixes the seal, and records the transaction in a journal that captures the date, time, type of act, your name and address, the identification method used, and any fee charged. If a notarization is challenged later, that journal entry is often the decisive piece of evidence.
If You Don’t Have Standard ID
Some states allow a credible identifying witness to vouch for your identity if you can’t produce acceptable identification. The general framework: one witness personally known to the notary, or two witnesses who present their own valid ID, swears under oath that you are who you claim to be. Credible witnesses cannot have a financial interest in the transaction and cannot be named in the document being notarized. The notary administers a separate oath to the witness before proceeding. This option exists for situations where someone has lost their ID, has an expired license, or otherwise can’t produce standard identification.
What the Certificate Must Contain
The notarial certificate is the written proof the act occurred, and its accuracy determines whether courts and recording offices will accept the document. A clean certificate includes:
- Venue—the state and county where the act was performed.
- The specific date the act occurred.
- Notarial wording describing the type of act, such as standard acknowledgment or jurat phrasing.
- The notary’s signature, using the exact name on their commission.
- The official seal or stamp, which contains at minimum the notary’s name, the words “Notary Public,” and the state of commission. Some states also require the commission number and expiration date within the seal.
- The title of office—”Notary Public” or the title of another authorized official.
The impression must be legible enough to reproduce clearly in photocopies and digital scans. If a stamp impression smudges, the notary should re-stamp in a clear area rather than stamping over the failed impression. States vary on whether they require an ink rubber stamp, an embossing seal, or either, and a few mandate specific ink colors. Not all states require the commission expiration date to appear on the certificate, but many notaries include it anyway because receiving agencies often ask.
Remote Online Notarization
As of 2026, the vast majority of states permit remote online notarization, where you and the notary connect through a live audio-video session instead of meeting in person. The option is useful for signers who are traveling, homebound, or in rural areas.
Remote notarization uses more rigorous identity verification than an in-person session. The standard framework has three layers: you display a government-issued photo ID on camera; automated technology analyzes the ID’s layout, format, and security features against known standards to detect forgeries; and you complete identity proofing, either by answering knowledge-based questions drawn from your personal history or through biometric verification such as facial recognition.
The entire session must be recorded. Most states require notaries to retain the audio-video recording for at least ten years, though retention periods vary. The recording serves the same evidentiary function as a journal entry with far more detail. Remote notarization still operates entirely under individual state laws, so rules about which platform to use, how identity proofing works, and whether out-of-state remote notarizations are accepted can differ.1Congress.gov. S.1561 – SECURE Notarization Act of 2025
When a Notary Must Refuse
A notary is supposed to be neutral, and when neutrality is compromised the notarization can be voided. The most fundamental rule: a notary cannot notarize their own signature. Beyond that, a notary is disqualified from any document in which they have a direct financial interest—owning a business involved in the transaction, earning a commission tied to the sale being documented, or being named as a party. Receiving the standard notary fee does not count, because the fee isn’t tied to the transaction’s outcome.
Family relationships can also disqualify. Some jurisdictions prohibit notarizations involving the notary’s spouse, parents, or children because the relationship creates an inherent risk of bias or coercion. Even in states without an explicit family prohibition, finding a different notary is the better practice when the signer is a close relative.
Non-attorney notaries face additional restrictions worth knowing as a consumer. A notary who is not a licensed attorney cannot help you draft, select, or understand documents, even for a fee. They cannot advise you on immigration matters, claim to be an attorney, or use titles like “notario” that could mislead the public. This matters in communities where “notario público” carries a different meaning in other legal systems; the U.S. notary role is narrower.
Fixing a Defective Notarization
Documents get rejected for notarization defects more often than you might expect. Common problems: an illegible seal, missing venue information, wrong notarial wording for the type of act performed, or the notary signing a name that doesn’t match their commission.
In most states, a notary can correct a certificate error by drawing a single line through the incorrect information, printing the correct information nearby, and initialing and dating the change, with a corresponding note in their journal. Correction fluid or tape should never be used; it raises suspicion of tampering, and receiving agencies routinely reject documents with whited-out corrections. If the original certificate doesn’t have enough space for a clean fix, the notary can line through the entire original certificate, write “see attached certificate,” and attach a new one. A few states prohibit any corrections after the act is complete, in which case the only remedy is to schedule a new appointment and perform the notarial act from scratch. When in doubt, a fresh notarization is the safest fix.
What It Costs
Most states cap the fee a notary can charge per act, and the caps are modest. For standard in-person acts like acknowledgments and jurats, maximum fees in states that set them typically fall between $2 and $15 per signature. A handful of states set no maximum at all. Remote online notarizations tend to cost more because the technology platform charges its own fees on top of the notary’s statutory fee. Travel fees, when a notary comes to your location, are usually separate from the per-signature charge and are often unregulated.
Foreign Language Documents and Use Abroad
State laws generally do not prohibit a notary from notarizing a document written in a language they don’t read. The certificate itself, however, must be in a language the notary understands, since the notary has to know what they’re certifying. You and the notary also must be able to communicate directly in the same language without relying on an interpreter. Only one state expressly authorizes a notary to use an interpreter during the act. If your document is in a language other than English, finding a notary who speaks that language is the practical answer.
If a notarized document will be used in another country, you may need an additional step called an apostille. For state-level notarizations, the Secretary of State in the state where the notarization occurred issues the apostille. For documents signed by federal officials, the U.S. Department of State handles apostille certification.2U.S. Department of State. Preparing a Document for an Apostille Certificate The apostille confirms to the receiving country that the notary’s commission and signature are legitimate. The system applies only to countries that participate in the Hague Apostille Convention; for non-participating countries, a longer chain of authentication through the embassy or consulate may be required.