What do I have to fill in by hand?

A form that arrives half filled is a form you still have to sit down with. So every box a form asks about gets its answer from the interview — including the ones people are surprised to be asked, like organ donor and voter registration questions on a license application. Those are your choices to make, so we ask you rather than deciding for you, and an unanswered choice question is left untouched rather than guessed.

Signatures

We never sign anything and never simulate a signature. No agency accepts a pre-applied signature image, and several forbid it outright — some states require you to sign in front of a representative at the counter. Every document that needs signing carries a callout saying so before you send it, including the ones that need a witness or a notary.

Your Social Security number

We never ask for it. It is the single most sensitive thing in a name change and storing it is pure downside, so it is not collected, not stored, and never printed on anything we produce. Every form that asks for one arrives with those boxes blank and a callout naming the exact box, so you write nine digits at the kitchen table instead of handing them to us.

The few boxes that are genuinely yours

A few boxes are a request rather than the whole of it, and your state sheet lists the ones on your own forms. The box itself is ticked from your answer; what stands behind it is a document we never see — a veteran designation wants a DD-214 at the counter, a medical indicator wants a physician’s statement, and one state wants a second form filled in behind the tick. A couple of boxes ask for a value the agency has never published a list for, and writing a guess is how an application gets bounced; where that happens the sheet says which box and why, so the blank is a decision rather than an oversight.

That applies to every download. When the printed copy goes on sale, its cover sheet will name every blanked box too, so nothing is left off quietly.