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

smithsonianmag.com

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

#51

Post by AdieuToLogic »

sulam wrote: post #46
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is all very cool so I’m not trying to be dismissive. In a lot of ways, giving a hobby out as a way to participate in the national archives is an end in itself. > But…computers can definitely do this way better, right? No. Cursive writing is analog and fluid, lacking consistency across authors and often inconsistent by an individual author as well. When done well, it could be classified as its own art form. Whe…

Current LLMs can absolutely do this as well as you can, probably better.

> Current LLMs can absolutely do this as well as you can, probably better.

This is obviously disprovable, in that if they could, they would, and this call to action would not exist.

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

#53

Post by tptacek »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #22
jncfhnb wrote: post #5

I don’t think I believe that OCR can’t do it but random humans can OCR is VERY good

> I don’t think I believe that OCR can’t do it but random humans can Considering the people involved are experts in their field, are certainly aware of OCR capabilities, and have publicized a need thusly: ... the National Archives is looking for volunteers who can help transcribe and organize its many handwritten records ... Perhaps "random humans" can perform tasks which could reshape your belief: > OCR is VERY good

No. Sign up and look at the current missions. A lot of what they want transcribed is totally straightforward to OCR --- not even LLM, OCR. Whatever's going on, and I'm not second-guessing them, a pretty big chunk of their problem appears to be well within the state of the art. The appeal to authority isn't going to play here, because you can just click through to the archives and see what they're trying to figure out.

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

#54

Post by tedunangst »

demosthanos wrote: post #30

Before commenting asking about why they don't just use LLMs, please note that the article specifically calls out that they do, but it's not always a viable solution: > The agency uses artificial intelligence and a technology known as optical character recognition to extract text from historical documents. But these methods don’t always work, and they aren’t always accurate. The document at the top is likely an especi…

Something about extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence? The evidence presented, a seemingly easily transcribed image, is hardly persuasive.

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

#55

Post by Osyris »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #51
sulam wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current LLMs can absolutely do this as well as you can, probably better.

> Current LLMs can absolutely do this as well as you can, probably better. This is obviously disprovable, in that if they could, they would, and this call to action would not exist.

That's quite a lot of faith you have in them.

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

#58

Post by tkgally »

This reminded me of something the historian Megan Marshall wrote in the introduction to her book The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005):

“I became expert in deciphering the sisters’ handwriting, and that of their ancestors, parents, and friends. Each era and each correspondent presented different challenges. Some hands were sprawling, some spindly, some cramped; t’s went uncrossed at the ends of words, and f’s and s’s were interchanged; spelling, capitalization, and punctuation could be erratic or idiosyncratic. Often, to save paper and postage, the sisters turned a single sheet ninety degrees and wrote back across a page already covered with handwriting. I learned to be especially attentive to these cross-written lines, in which the sisters invariably confided their deepest feelings in the last hurried moments of closing a letter. Here I would find the urgent personal message that had been put off for the sake of dispensing news or settling business. In one such postscript, I discovered Elizabeth’s account of a conversation with Horace Mann in which the two spoke frankly of their love for each other and finally settled on what it meant.”

A photograph of a letter with cross-writing is here:

https://www.masshist.org/database/1774

Marshall wrote more in an article for Slate:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/05/reading-the-peab...

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

#59

Post by musicale »

posterguy wrote: post #27
jb1991 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it does say that in the article, that’s it's a lack of education in reading cursive.

no, it says the opposite, that there is growing interest in bringing it back into curriculums in various states. but that's aside from the point that the smithsonian making a tutorial on reading cursive would just represent an additional resource, of which we are not lacking, to learn. whether or not we teach it is different, but finding a resource to learn is not hard.

Maybe linking to the resource. "Learn how to read this document."

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

#60

Post by _pktm_ »

jb1991 wrote: post #15

> particularly for Americans who never learned cursive in school. American schools don’t teach it anymore?!

Not that I can tell, unless you encounter a teacher who (personally) believes it’s worthwhile.

The real problem, IMO, is that they don’t teach cursive but also don’t teach typing. They’ve thrown laptops at the kids without giving them the basic skill necessary to be effective in that medium.

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