Can you read this cursive handwriting? The National Archives wants your help

cheers! I was looking for something semi productive to sink a Friday night into

on a more serious note, working through a transcription project for letters and journals that nobody has touched since they've been archived is such a wonderful feeling. Aside from being in front of the physical document itself, your degree of separation from the writer and point is time is vanishingly small!

I always like to observe when they cross something out or make a mistake and think about what could have caused that. Did a friend pass by the door and scare them? Did they get distracted looking out the window? It's all so close and yet so far away :)

Funnily enough, there have been a few times over the past couple of years I've been asked by younger co-workers to read something for them that was written in cursive. I hadn't really realized it had become such a (comparatively) rare skill. This fact is making me feel older than my actual 50th birthday did!

It might be nice for people to be able to actually read the documents in the National Archives rather than relying on a transcription or a mobile app.

I wonder if they've considered making a simple tutorial on how to read cursive? It's not that hard if you can already read printed English. And of course you can practice on documents in the National Archives.

It's exciting and fun to learn to read an unfamiliar script, like the runes on the cover of The Hobbit ... or the engraving-style cursive of the US Constitution.

> I don’t think I believe that OCR can’t do it but random humans can

I do.

> OCR is VERY good

Uh, my experience is extremely different.

After using a keyboard for circa 50 years, I can't read my own handwriting. I can't even give a reproduceable signature.