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Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: brianz on Friday 17 February 12 11:12 GMT (UK)

Title: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: brianz on Friday 17 February 12 11:12 GMT (UK): As I was transcribing some old wills I found this site for the recognition of old handwiting thought it might be useful

Can it please be moved to the Resources section

Thanks

http://web.archive.org/web/20120509022051/http://www.genealogia.fi/faq/faq031e.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20120509022051/http://www.genealogia.fi/faq/faq031e.htm)
archive link
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: chinakay on Saturday 18 February 12 03:11 GMT (UK): NICE! Just what I'd been searching for. Thanks for posting this, brianz :D

There's another one here, but not as good.
http://www.rootschat.com/links/0k9s/

Cheers,
China
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: Redroger on Saturday 18 February 12 10:51 GMT (UK): Thanks Brianz.
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: brianz on Saturday 18 February 12 12:17 GMT (UK): You're welcome
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: Whipby on Saturday 18 February 12 14:11 GMT (UK): Really useful, thanks Brianz.
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: veeblevort on Saturday 10 March 12 15:09 GMT (UK): Thanks both. Two good links. I particularly like that both provide examples
of different variants. Hopefully an admin will update the resources post on
this board, but have added them to my favourites in case not.

vv.
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: JaneyCanuck on Thursday 13 September 12 19:41 BST (UK): May I add this one? that I just found while looking at a question in this forum:

Early Modern Handwriting: Alphabets
http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/alphabets.html (http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/ceres/ehoc/alphabets.html)
"The links to individual letter-forms contain illustrations drawn from the manuscripts collected on this site, and present roughly chronological accounts of the letters as they appear in English documents between 1500 and 1700."

Click on each upper-case or lower-case letter, in the boxes on the left and right, to see several examples of each, excerpted from actual documents. I found it very useful.

edit -- oops, I see that site is in berlin-bob's thread -- but the link above goes directly to the page for accessing samples, so I'll leave this post, as the site and that page deserve special mention for their usefulness, I think. ;)
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: GrahamSimons on Thursday 13 September 12 22:39 BST (UK): And this one too: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: stonechat on Tuesday 18 September 12 12:51 BST (UK): For Ancestry subscribers they recently added a text call Court Hand restored - very good help
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: avacuppa on Monday 10 December 12 06:26 GMT (UK): This will come in very handy I think. Thank you for posting.
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: yattonharry on Monday 24 December 12 20:51 GMT (UK): We use #Examples of Handwriting 1550-1650 by W.S.B Buck - can get it SoG and National Archives shop or that place which most people buy books.

Jill :D
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: veeblevort on Wednesday 13 February 13 11:20 GMT (UK): For Scottish documents, the following are useful:

http://www.scottishhandwriting.com (http://www.scottishhandwriting.com)

especially http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/tutorials.asp (http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/tutorials.asp)

Together with the online dictionary of the Scots Language:

http://www.dsl.ac.uk (http://www.dsl.ac.uk)

vv.
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: veeblevort on Wednesday 13 February 13 11:55 GMT (UK): For those obsolete or obscure words in wills etc.

Wright's 'English Dialect Dictionary' in six volumes
available as searchable pdf files.
Claims to contain all words known to have been used
or still in use over the 200 years up to 1898.

Volume 1: http://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi01wrig

and so on for the other 5 volumes.

vv.
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: yattonharry on Wednesday 13 February 13 15:07 GMT (UK): That seems a great link, Thanks.

Thanks also to Janey for her excellent link. I hadn't visited this site before but it is really good.
Title: Re: Resource for 16th to 19thC Handwriting
Post by: veeblevort on Monday 19 August 13 16:36 BST (UK): The Record Interpreter, sets out to expand upon Wright's
Courthand Restored, and succeeds, particularly with
abbreviations. Pdf file available here:

http://archive.org/details/recordinterprete00martiala

This resource has been brought to our attention at this
board numerous times (by arthurk, Roger in Sussex,
billyblue, msallen, and redroger) but for the sake of
people newly arriving here, I think its worth posting
to a resources topic.

vv.
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Centuary Handwriting
Post by: yattonharry on Friday 07 March 14 13:35 GMT (UK): A group of us have been transcribing wills for our history society for four years. The books which help us are: 'Examples of Handwriting' - W.S.B.Buck [ I mentioned this earlier] 'The Local Historian's Glossary and Vade Mecum' - Joy Bristow and 'Words from Wills & other probate records' - Stuart A Raymond, 'A Secretary Hand ABC Book' by Alf Ison, a great little book. All are excellent. We have covered from 1540 to around 1750 so far.

Hoping this helps anyone starting out on this project, which I would recommend to all history societies be they family or local.
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Centuary Handwriting
Post by: chinakay on Monday 06 October 14 17:33 BST (UK): Brianz's link has disappeared, anybody know where to? Unfortunately the site is a Finnish genealogical society and even with Google Translate to help I can't find a handwriting section :P

Cheers,
China
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Centuary Handwriting
Post by: Redroger on Tuesday 07 October 14 17:05 BST (UK): Just tried it, and got a 404 Not found error
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Centuary Handwriting
Post by: sarah on Wednesday 08 October 14 10:07 BST (UK): Found an archive copy that seems to work, if anyone finds a new live website let me know.

Sarah :)
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Centuary Handwriting
Post by: chinakay on Wednesday 08 October 14 16:24 BST (UK): The Wayback Machine! Brilliant, sarah...hadn't thought of it :P Thanks!

Strange but it doesn't seem to work more than once from the link. If you are having the same problem, bookmark the link first time there and use the bookmark to access the page subsequently.

Cheers,
China
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Centuary Handwriting
Post by: Redroger on Thursday 09 October 14 18:20 BST (UK): Thanks for the tip
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: aliceskinner on Friday 22 April 16 15:21 BST (UK): cool!
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: Vance Mead on Monday 08 April 19 13:14 BST (UK): I don't think anyone has linked to this

Johnson and Jenkinson, English Court Hand, A.D. 1066 to 1500.

https://archive.org/details/englishcourthand01john/page/n6
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: gemmanoon on Monday 21 October 19 15:38 BST (UK): I don't know if anyone has linked to this, but I found the following link extremely useful when I couldn't figure out certain words on some 17th century wills - the best example for me being "a moiety", which I was consistently transcribing as "moistly" and completely changing the context of the sentence in the process :-)

http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~fordingtondorset/genealogy/Files/Glossary.html
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: Redroger on Tuesday 22 October 19 13:46 BST (UK): Some years ago I was able to help a lady on this site who was having difficulty with a 16th century Lincolnshire sheep farmer
"s inventory. The word causing difficulty was hoggett. This was causing confusion, a hoggett is a lamb from the previous season and not a piglet.
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: violetqueen on Friday 12 June 20 08:00 BST (UK): this is just a test post
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: mezentia on Saturday 27 November 21 13:27 GMT (UK): Just found this page:

https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/mediawiki/media/images_pedia_folgerpedia_mw/2/21/Alphabet_Abbreviations.pdf

Useful advice and good examples.
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting - Transkribus
Post by: Ronda231 on Friday 21 July 23 01:36 BST (UK): There is a free online transcribing tool now available, which a limited number of people may may useful:

'Transkribus' is an AI-powered platform for text recognition, transcription
and searching of historical documents – from any place, any time, and in any language.

https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/

It works with both printed and handwritten text (probably works best with printed text).

On their website you first select a pre-programmed model, which has been designed for a specific document type, (e.g. typewritten latin, Dutch Gothic Print 16th-18th century etc etc.) there are 120 public models available.

https://readcoop.eu/transkribus/public-models/

You find the closest fit to your document type/ text, then click 'view and try model' - upload your
document into the window - Jpeg or PNG only - it then transcribes the document into the language of the model.

I have been trying out this TransKribus software on 16th Century, untidily hand written scots/latin documents for a few weeks now and apart from the odd intelligible sentence here and there, have had no success whatsoever!

Good Luck!

PS Don't ask me any questions about this AI powered software - because I don't know anything.
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: Bookbox on Thursday 17 August 23 10:24 BST (UK): A useful guide to reading old handwriting has recently been issued by IHGS, with practice examples and solutions.

Downloadable (free) here ...
https://www.ihgs.ac.uk/_resources/introduction-to-paleography.pdf
Title: Re: Link: Resources for Reading 16th to 19th Century Handwriting
Post by: Zefiro on Sunday 12 November 23 15:45 GMT (UK): Quote from: Bookbox on Thursday 17 August 23 10:24 BST (UK)
A useful guide to reading old handwriting has recently been issued by IHGS, with practice examples and solutions.

Downloadable (free) here ...
https://www.ihgs.ac.uk/_resources/introduction-to-paleography.pdf

link didn't work for me...

This one did: https://www.ihgs.ac.uk/files/1529-1-1.pdf

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