Navigating handwritten documents with ease

We 're excited to introduce a valuable new suite of resources designed to help you learn about the art of deciphering cursive handwriting within archival records and other materials.

The transcription of records and documents containing cursive handwriting is a skill that many find challenging. We’ve put together a video, fact sheet and blog post which all offer practical tips and strategies for deciphering handwritten documents.

Covering essential techniques, hints, and examples, it will equip you with the skills needed for transcription and general research purposes.

Deciphering Handwriting - Reading cursive writing

Duration 4:26

Have you ever tried to read an old handwritten document, and you know it's in English, but it looks like a bunch of squiggles? The letters are all joined together, the spelling can be really weird, and sometimes the same word can be spelled differently on the same page. So how do we read it now? Well, it's a skill you will need to practice, and the more you do it, the easier it gets. We're going to cover some tips for deciphering handwritten documents using the Colonial Secretary Records. We'll find somewhere to start, look for clues, and try to break down the process to help you get started.

We're going to start by saying you are not alone. This transcription work can be hard, and you will make mistakes, but there are communities of people to ask questions of, discuss, and learn from. And watching a video about reading old handwritten documents doesn't hurt either.

So, firstly, let's find somewhere to start. The only way to get good at reading old handwriting is to do it, a lot. If the first page is too difficult, try the second one, or the third, or page 15. Find somewhere you feel comfortable starting and just try. Read the letter all the way through and write down the words and letters that you recognize. Start small and build from there. Simply leave a dash for anything you can't decipher yet, then go back and read through again. It's also important to transcribe the document exactly as it's written. Don't correct the typos, spelling, or grammar. For any additional notes or comments on the page, like text in the margins, use square brackets with a brief description of where the text appears on the page, followed by the transcription.

Once you've read the document and deciphered the easy stuff, if there is any, it's time to put on that detective hat and look for clues. We like to start with a common word, like the word "the" or the months of the year. That will help us work out how the author wrote several letters, in both lowercase and capital. There are also words that will show up a few times. You might also need to get creative when trying to transcribe signatures. Check if that person is mentioned on another page, or you can look for clues on websites like Trove or Wikipedia to find the names and titles of people. Sometimes you can work out the name of the person if you have their title. You can search for who held that position at that time. Keep your eyes peeled to pull together all the clues to make sense of the document that you're working on.

Finally, it's time to work out the rest. For trickier words, try working backwards, looking at each letter individually. It forces our brains to see the characters differently instead of trying to read everything together like a sentence. Next, you could try reading the document out loud. Some of these words, especially names and places, are often misspelled, so it helps to sound out what you can read, because how it sounds was probably how the original author spelled it. By switching our brains between recognizing characters in reverse and then sounding out the words, we can start to piece together some of the more difficult words.

We've also got a few quick tips that can help you get back on track when transcribing gets really difficult. Be on the lookout for common phrases and abbreviations. A lot of old handwriting used these time-saving methods, so getting familiar with some of the common phrases you'll come across will help speed up your transcriptions.

Hopefully, these steps will help you get started. The most important step is to try. The more you do it, the easier it will become. And if you can't work it out, don't worry—transcribing these documents is a community effort. There's also plenty of resources available to help you read handwriting.

And sincerely, a big thank you to you for starting this journey. Anything you do to help transcribe these documents helps make them easier for others to find and use.