I guess it's only really a superpower, if you get paid a living wage to do it.

I could read and write cursive before I could print. Here I was thinking of taking up short hand.

I only need to find one rare skill that pays. One!

Volunteering will hardly make a dent in hundreds of years of cursive documents.

penmanship we wouldn't need people to translate documents into English. I never thought
reading handwriting would be like interpreting hieroglyphics.

decipher. It’s not just reading.

Cursive letter shapes have changed over time. I remember that my mother wrote the letter "r" differently than what I was l taught.

Also, I've learned from genealogy research that cursive lettering in old documents written in English sometimes used a German style, i.e. capitalizing nouns. People often had their own personal style of flourishes in writing capital letters. Sometimes they wrote the English double "s" like the German eszett.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F#:~:text=In%20German%20orthography%2C%20the%20letter,following%20long%20vowels%20and%20diphthongs.

the decades and centuries, not to mention measures letter writers took to minimize the former high costs of mailing, eg., tiny writing, cross-writing, tissue/thin paper.

had absolutely beautiful penmanship/cursive. But it's so heavily stylized that even myself, who reads/writes cursive, has to really slow down to take it in. It's absolutle gorgeous, but at first glance it might appear like a foreign language.

The old priest records written in Gaelic, Latin, or French are tiny chicken scratches and scribbles.

census takers in the US and of officials who filled out marriage and death certificates in English in the US.

Latin because the old Irish priests wrote in Gaelic Latin.
(Sometimes they had to do it in secret and the writing was on tiny pieces of paper
and teeny tiny writing.)

Also paper and ink were expensive and they didn't want to waste it.

And yes old records in the US in English are impossible at times.
Get out the magnifying glass and that still doesn't help.

The employees at Ellis Island, etc.
Census workers yes.
Actually any old document.
Don't know what they were thinking as they were writing.

Also with immigrants, I don't think the census takers understood them half the time
and just wrote whatever they thought they heard.

My Irish grandparents spoke with a very heavy Irish brogue, the family could understand them
we listened to them all the time. But other Americans couldn't easily understand them.

My grandfather was a school teacher in Ireland so was able to speak more clearly and a bit
less of an accent, and I am lucky his handwringing was perfect and very legible.
His writing was easy to read in all documents.

Many immigrants to the US were not literate, so had to have other people write down things for them.
And stuff got lost in the translation.

I've posted before on DU about this funny family story.

My aunt was searching for census records of my paternal great-grandfather, Gottlieb Herd. He was from the German sector of Switzerland at Bern. She could not find him anywhere so she switched her computer search to Soundex for similar sounding names. She found him listed as Cutlip Hurt from Bear, Germany.

It was the right location in the US, with the right dates and spouse.

In a German accent, the "g" in his name would sound like a guttural "k." The "b" at the end of his first name would be softer than an English "b." The "d" at the end of his surname, Herd, would sound a lot like a "t." The pronunciation of "ber" in Bern would rhyme with hair. It would sound like bairn.

So, if great-grandpa said that he was German from Bern, the census taker concluded that he was from Bear, Germany. Except that there is no Bear, Germany, which would have been spelled as Baer if it did exist.

So, the mix up in pronunciation comes out as an amusing sort of malapropism in English. Cutlip Hurt from Bear, Germany. Well, if his lip was cut by a bear in Germany, yeah, it would hurt. LOL.

They changed what they were teaching for an "r" a year or two later.
But, I have three lower case Rs in my first & last name, so I got so locked on to the way I originally learned.
The link shows what kind of "r" I use. Might be the same as what your mom used.
https://www.instagram.com/tv_calligraphee/p/C3NMRR2vD2v/

The point of transcription is to create documents that are in a standard digital format. Currently they are just images.

an archive that was, in my opinion, impossible for a beginner to decipher. Maybe they do it differently now.

It makes it seem the documents are selected by the volunteer. So, that may have changed.

I understand what you are talking about, I have some relatives whose script I wouldn’t wish on anyone to decipher.

I used to fill up entire blue books with quite legible cursive during college exams, but now I find myself printing when writing by hand because my cursive style is hard to read. Cursive has become a lost art.

I wonder if they start to teach cursive as a “second language” or We come to cursive being totally gone.

There are books for adults that cost less than $10.

Last edited Sun Jan 12, 2025, 12:59 PM - Edit history (1)

and attach it to the homing pigeon.

I had gotten a bundle of old letters, some of them written in cursive. I didn't have trouble reading most of them, but there was a personal letter that was really hard to read. I ended up transcribing it, just because I didn't want to finally get through it and then forget what it said. I printed out a copy of my transcription and put the original and transcript together. I enjoyed the time I spent with working on it.
Thanks so much for the post

You have my pity. McDonalds awaits you.

Have you ever tried to read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? I can make out “John Hancock” easily enough, but the rest? It’s darn near impossible.

Back in high school our chem teacher had purchased an old farmstead. The main house was large and old--rebuilt after the British burned it after the Battle of Baltimore. The old slave quarters weren't burned and dated to the 1600s.

Chem teacher had gotten copies of the old records from the 1600s and 1700s and wanted to have them decoded, so my girlfriend, her best friend, and I spent time copying them over from old cursive to new cursive, having another one of us proof and correct, and then type them up. He got it declared a national heritage site of some sort, protected status--the two structures (at some point united) and the old family cemetery (not *his* family's). Wasn't hard to teach ourselves.

Then reading a reproduction of the handwritten founding documents of the US became really easy--the scribes' penmanship on the old title documents and land grants was good, but a but rushed and at times cramped. Jefferson's penmanship was superb.

Now, reading 19th century and early 20th century Russian handwriting for me, *that's* a challenge.

archives, should find out where the Postal Service find their recruits. Cursive seems to a los subject, eh?penman ship. Some of the earlier script was beautiful. Getting off subject. My mother in law had beautiful script.mine was never great , now have to get within an inch to see what I read or print or write Dang. p

From those times. It seems like a specialized skill to me. I might want to give it a try, but I’m not going to do it for free. 😹

I spent hours last year copying one of my favorite books in one of the scripts. I think it was italics. It was fun, but I had an awful time to start with. I had improved though by the time I’d copied like 70 or 80 pages. My illustrations weren’t as good as I wanted, but the original book had almost none. So I had to think up my own. If you are an old fart and your handwriting has started to get worse, I recommend doing something like this. It really improved my handwriting, it’s only temporary and I will have to do it again to keep it at a readable standard, but I think it’s worth it.

I think I'll give it a shot. I've also done genealogy research, so I know it's not going to be easy to do.
But I can try.

Oh I forgot... there are bombs to buy and tanks to ship overseas.

I can do it, but I ain't doing it for free...

Spent I don't know how many hours typing in from scans. Since I can handle different alphabets and diacritics, a lot of what I did was non-English. Seemed to have wound up focusing a lot on Bulgarian, for some reason.

You say you need my "rare superpower," the ability to read cursive and, specifically, looped cursive. And you are not willing to pay me to share my talents. I would be great for this "job" and would make far fewer errors than the volunteers, especially the ones who have to be trained(!) to read cursive. I would expect to be very well paid--rare superpower pay level, not bottom of the food chain level. If you are interested in employing me, I l'll submit my resume and would be happy to interview.

Go to the volunteer link and brag how sharp you are, good luck!

Volunteer link: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/get-started-transcribing

Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. Wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

It’s done in astronomy. Why not history?

I wish it could be different. Because we are charged up the ahem wazoo for everything we purchase, I simply have no interest in giving away time.

I don't think there is a billionaire on this planet who will put time in on this project on a volunteer basis, so why should the rest of us?

that we should all have the priorities and values of billionaires? No thanks.

say "you must work for free" in a society that only values money, then I understand that you only see me as a slave.

It is one thing to choose to be charitable, it is another for owners to expect workers to happily labor for free.

I do it myself.
I substitute teach.
After a month, I see what got deposited. Let's say it's 8 dates. Would be around $700 net.
I keep $10 per day (gas and lunch), & donate the other the $620 to a food pantry.
I'm still doing it for the charity but I'm not working for free.

Because it's to the benefit of US, not the rich.

but I am not in favor of sane washing this system. That just makes it easier for them to subjugate others. It will never change if we aren't willing to confront the systemic problem. We wouldn't need charities if we had an equitable system to begin with.

You mean I can "claim" a document, then write (type) anything I feel like? This could be awesome!

Seems to me this should be a no-brainer* to use AI. Just that training the models takes time, money, and electricity (a lot of it).

* This pun is fully intended.

I deciphered 19th C manuscripts in Portuguese. English seems easy by comparison. I guess I’ll find out.

… on Inauguration Day.

I can read cursive in English (back to the 18th century) and Spanish (back to the 17th century).
I'd love to do this, but my rate is $75/hour. My PhD wasn't free.