A notarial certificate has to show five things on its face: the venue (state and county), the date of the act, the name of the person who appeared, wording that matches the specific type of notarization performed, and the notary’s signature and official stamp or seal. Most states draw the required elements and wording of a notarial certificate from the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts (RULONA), which supplies short-form templates for each type of act. The template you use depends on what the notary is actually doing: taking an acknowledgment, administering an oath, witnessing a signature, or certifying a copy.
Venue, Date, and Signer’s Name
Every certificate opens with a venue block identifying where the notarization happened. Under RULONA the standard form reads “State of ______, County of ______.” The venue shows the notary was acting within their commissioned jurisdiction. For in-person acts, it reflects where the signer and notary were physically together.
Right after the venue, the certificate states the exact date the signer appeared before the notary. That is the date the act occurred, not the date the document was drafted. The certificate also has to name every person who appeared, so the record identifies each participant.
Acknowledgment Wording
An acknowledgment confirms that the signer personally appeared and acknowledged signing the document voluntarily. The RULONA short form for an individual acknowledgment reads:
“This record was acknowledged before me on [date] by [name of individual].”
That sentence does the work. It establishes personal appearance, identifies the signer, and records the acknowledgment. Some older state forms still use “free act and deed”; RULONA’s model language does not require it, but if your state’s statutory form includes it, follow the state form.
The signer does not have to sign in front of the notary for an acknowledgment. They can sign beforehand and then appear to confirm the signature is theirs and that they signed willingly. Property deeds, mortgages, and powers of attorney almost always call for an acknowledgment.
Acknowledgment in a Representative Capacity
When someone signs for a corporation, trust, or principal under a power of attorney, the certificate has to show that representative role. The RULONA form adds language naming the authority and the entity:
“This record was acknowledged before me on [date] by [name] as [type of authority, such as officer or trustee] of [name of entity on behalf of whom the record was executed].”
Omitting the representative language is a common error. A deed that reads as though a corporate officer signed personally, rather than for the company, raises title questions that are expensive to clean up later.
Jurat Wording
A jurat is a verification on oath or affirmation. It does different work than an acknowledgment. Instead of confirming identity and willingness, the notary administers a verbal oath or affirmation in which the signer swears the contents of the document are true. The RULONA short-form jurat reads:
“Signed and sworn to (or affirmed) before me on [date] by [name of individual making statement].”
Two things set a jurat apart. The signer must sign in the notary’s presence, not beforehand. And the notary must actually administer an oath or affirmation out loud before the signing. Skipping the verbal ceremony defeats the point: the oath places the signer under penalty of perjury, which under federal law carries up to five years in prison, a fine, or both.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1621 – Perjury Generally State penalties vary but follow a similar range.
Jurats are standard for affidavits, depositions, and verified pleadings. If the certificate says “acknowledged” where it should say “sworn” or “affirmed,” the document has not been verified under oath, and a court may refuse to treat it as sworn testimony.
Signature Witnessing Wording
A signature witnessing is the simplest of the common notarial acts. The notary confirms that the signer signed the document in the notary’s presence. The RULONA short form reads:
“Signed before me on [date] by [name of individual].”
The telling phrase is “signed before me” rather than “acknowledged before me” or “sworn before me.” The signer cannot sign ahead of time; the notary has to watch the signing. But no oath or affirmation is involved, and the signer makes no verbal declaration. The notary is acting as an official witness to the signing.
Copy Certification Wording
In states that authorize it, a notary can certify that a photocopy is a true and accurate reproduction of an original. The RULONA short form reads:
“I certify that this is a true and correct copy of a record in the possession of [name of document custodian].”
One boundary to know: in most states a notary cannot certify copies of vital records such as birth certificates, death certificates, or marriage licenses. Those certified copies come only from the issuing government agency. A notarial copy certification also does not vouch for the truth of the original’s contents. It only confirms that the copy matches the original.
The Notary’s Signature, Stamp, and Seal
Every certificate ends with the notary’s official signature and, in most states, an ink stamp or embossed seal. The signature has to match the name on file with the commissioning authority. A notary commissioned under their full legal name cannot sign with a nickname or shortened version.
The stamp or seal typically shows:
- The notary’s name as it appears on the commission
- The title “Notary Public”
- The commissioning state
- The commission expiration date
- The commission number, required in many but not all states
These elements let anyone reviewing the document confirm the notary was properly commissioned and that the commission had not expired on the date of the act. A certificate missing the stamp or showing an expired commission will almost certainly be rejected by a recording office. Because stamps smudge and signatures are often hard to read, some states also require the notary to print their name legibly near the signature.
Remote Online Notarization Wording
When the act is performed over audio-video technology, the certificate needs added language disclosing that fact. A widely used statement reads: “This notarial act involved a statement made in or a signature executed on a record by a remotely located individual using communication technology.”
The venue block reflects the notary’s physical location, not the signer’s. If the notary is in one state and the signer in another, the venue names the notary’s state and county, and the notary has to be physically within the commissioning state during the session. Specific wording and technology requirements vary by state statute.
Correcting a Defective Certificate
Mistakes happen. A misspelled name, wrong date, or incorrect county can all make a certificate defective, and the rules for fixing them vary by state.
Where corrections after the fact are permitted, the usual method is to draw a single line through the incorrect information, write the correction nearby, and initial and date the change. The notary should also note the correction in their journal. White-out, correction tape, and erasures are never acceptable, because they hide what was originally written.
Some states do not allow after-the-fact corrections at all. In those jurisdictions the notary and signer have to meet again for a new notarization, with a fresh certificate replacing the voided original. When the original certificate has no room for a legible correction, a replacement certificate can be attached: the notary lines through the original, writes “see attached certificate,” initials the change, and completes and attaches the new one.
One rule applies everywhere. Only the notary who performed the original act can correct the certificate. Not the signer, not an attorney, not another notary. And a notary can only correct the certificate wording, never the body of the underlying document.
What Happens When the Wording Is Wrong
Defective certificate wording is not a technicality. Recording offices in most states reject documents outright when the certificate is incomplete, uses the wrong type of wording for the transaction, or lacks the notary’s stamp and signature. In real estate closings that rejection can be costly.
Even if a defective certificate is recorded, the document’s legal effect can be weakened. Courts in several states hold that a recorded instrument with a defective acknowledgment does not give constructive notice to third parties. A later buyer or lender may not be charged with knowledge of the earlier transaction, which can upend priority in a title dispute. The document may still be valid between the original parties, but its protection against the rest of the world is compromised.
For a jurat, defective wording can turn what should be sworn testimony into an unsworn statement. If the certificate does not show that an oath or affirmation was administered, the signer is not subject to perjury penalties, and the document loses much of its evidentiary weight.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1621 – Perjury Generally Courts and agencies that required a sworn statement in the first place are unlikely to accept one where the jurat language is wrong or missing.