On the ____ day of ____ in the year ____ before me, the undersigned, personally appeared. , personally known to me or proved to me on the basis of satisfactory.An acknowledgment is one of the most common types of notarial acts, but it often confuses Notaries. Here are 5 steps to performing an acknowledgment. To Authenticate a notary signature, Original documents and signatures are required to Authenticate a Notary. I'm going to take a minute here and we're going to cover how to properly do an all-purpose acknowledgement for the state of California.