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

257 points by lemonberry 2y ago

poulpy123 2y ago
My brother in history, I can't even read mine
Unearned5161 2y ago
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serious note, working through a transcription project for letters and journals that nobody has touched since they've been archived is such a wonderful feeling.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 :)
Over2Chars 2y ago
It says "The following is the dedication of James Lambert a soldier of the Revolutionary wars with the Americas." blah blah blah
- sayrer 2y ago
  Yes, that seems right. Not that difficult. This one suffers from some poor penmanship, though.
- Unearned5161 2y ago
  I'm not too sure about that reading, I got "The following is the declaration of James Lambert a soldier of the Revolutionary War in South America." rather different
  - sayrer 2y ago
    oh, it is "declaration", yes, but not South America. this guy is even on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/James-Lambert-1758-1847-Elaboration-Revolutionary/dp/1438906218 https://www.amazon.com/James-Lambert-1758-1847-Elaboration-R...
  - jahewson 2y ago
    I got “North America”
    - ripe 2y ago
      Hmm, interesting: “North America” does make sense, and 4o also seems to transcribe it that way, but the handwriting looks like it says “South America” to me.
Baeocystin 2y ago
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!
- MattGaiser 2y ago
  I'm 28. I can only read the document in the article with a lot of effort and fiddling with the contrast.
- toolslive 2y ago
  I'm a middle aged European and I have no issue reading the cursive handwriting shown there. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of (UK) senior citizens who would be thrilled to help out here. The retirement homes are filled with bored people eager to engage in anything.
jncfhnb 2y ago
I don’t think I believe that OCR can’t do it but random humans can OCR is VERY good
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  > 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.
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    Your experience is obsolete.
    - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
      Oh, ok then.
      - CamperBob2 2y ago
        I mean, all you have to do is feed the image to ChatGPT, and it will read it basically as well as you can. Denying/downvoting reality is always an option, of course.
        bigstrat2003 2y ago
        Not being rude was also an option, one you chose not to take for some reason. Seriously, all it would've taken was for you to say something like "there have been a lot of advancements so it's probably different than you remember". This conversation would've gone much smoother for you if you had. And BugsJustFindMe can't downvote you, because it was a reply to him. So don't bite his head off over it. You got downvoted because you were a jerk, plain and simple.
        CamperBob2 2y ago
        Not being rude was also an option Refraining from reflexively pooh-poohing AI with uninformed and/or out-of-date opinions is also an option, but not one often exercised on HN. It gets old not being able to carry on a discussion without squinting at grayed-out text, simply because someone pointed out that humans aren't robots and should no longer have to emulate them.
musicale 2y ago
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.
- posterguy 2y ago
  i dont think the problem is the lack of resources to learn how to read and write cursive
  - jb1991 2y ago
    Except that it does say that in the article, that’s it's a lack of education in reading cursive.
    - posterguy 2y ago
      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.
      - musicale 2y ago
        Maybe linking to the resource. "Learn how to read this document."
    - Levitz 2y ago
      Those two statements aren't at odds with each other. For example, there's a great abundance of resources to learn about music theory and such too, the average person doesn't know such things because they aren't interested.
iambateman 2y ago
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?
- aaron695 2y ago
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- jonahx 2y ago
  I had the same thought but maybe on old hand writing they can't? EDIT: I tried giving the sample to 4o and it gave: The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America. The said James Lambert this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the State of Indiana and at the November Term of said Court (1841), it being a court of record created by the laws of Indiana and made oath that: On the 25th day of March 1842, he will be eighty-five years old, that he was born in the State of Maryland, that he is now a resident of said county and has been for the 27 years last past; that he has lived in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania...
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- AdieuToLogic 2y ago
  > 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. When done poorly, it can resemble the path walked by a chicken on meth.
zabzonk 2y ago
After using a keyboard for circa 50 years, I can't read my own handwriting. I can't even give a reproduceable signature.
- munchler 2y ago
  Me too, and I used to be proud of my handwriting back in the 90's. Definitely a loss in self-expression.
- dpb001 2y ago
  Same here. Old enough to remember when your signature on a credit card receipt would be given a quick look to compare it to the scrawl on the back of the card. If this was still being done I’d probably fail 50% of the transactions I attempt.
  - kmoser 2y ago
    Nobody has checked the back of my credit card for the presence of a signature in decades, let alone whether the signature matches. (I also haven't bothered to sign my credit card for this reason, but also because why would I want somebody to have my actual signature if my card is stolen?) These days my "signature" on a credit card purchase is usually a smiley face. Nobody has ever complained.
    - dpb001 2y ago
      Yup, it’s been decades - I remember it happening with the carbon copy imprinting devices and it may have been more common in the US rural South where I was working at the time. The squiggles I fingerpaint on checkout screens now are my version of your smiley face.
jb1991 2y ago
> particularly for Americans who never learned cursive in school. American schools don’t teach it anymore?!
- jghn 2y ago
  Why would they? It’s an anachronism optimizing for writing speed
  - hardbants 2y ago
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  - galangalalgol 2y ago
    They started teaching it again because it correlated with better outcomes for things seemingly unrelated to writing. And it was important to learn it before typing supposedly. There is probably some better way to accomplish whatever it is actually doing, but they don't seem to know that.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    I agree that cursive handwriting has become useless. As a child, even many years before having access to personal computers or any other kind of typewriting, I have switched my handwriting from cursive to using the kind of sans-serif typefaces used in technical drawing and since then I have never written again cursively, with the exception of my signature, where required on official documents. Nevertheless, I believe that some kind of calligraphy is necessary for developing fine motor skills in children, unless it is replaced with some other activity that requires a similar precision in the movements of the fingers and of the hand.
- _pktm_ 2y ago
  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.
jez 2y ago
The handwriting in some of these snippets, while sometimes difficult to read for one reason or another, is nonetheless beautiful: did everyone who wrote have such great handwriting back then? I'm looking at the piece in the Instagram post linked by the page, which begins, "honor of holding in their service". The lines are so straight, the letters are so uniform!
- cyberax 2y ago
  Handwriting is a skill, you get better with practice! A lot of bad handwriting stems from using it to write down things quickly (see: https://imgur.com/doctors-strike-5ANma https://imgur.com/doctors-strike-5ANma ). If you instead focus on doing slow calligraphy, your handwriting can improve rapidly.
- 999900000999 2y ago
  Widespread literacy is an extremely recent phenomenon. I highly doubt most people could write that well
  - quickthrowman 2y ago
    The US is an extreme outlier with regards to a high rate of literacy compared to almost everywhere else during the 1600-1800s. Today is a different story, Massachusetts had a higher rate of literacy when education was made compulsory in the 19th century than it does currently, which is kind of astounding. > Sheldon Richman quotes data showing that from 1650 to 1795, American male literacy climbed from 60 to 90 percent. Between 1800 and 1840 literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent. In the South the rate grew from about 55 percent to 81 percent. Richman also quotes evidence indicating that literacy in Massachusetts was 98 percent on the eve of legislated compulsion and is about 91 percent today. https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=307 https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=307
    - 999900000999 2y ago
      I'm happy to be proven wrong. Any reason for this being an American thing? I'd still assume fine penmanship was a mark of the upper class though
tptacek 2y ago
Isn't this like a bread-and-butter AI task? “The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America.” “The said James Lambert, on this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the State of Indiana, at the November Term of said Court [1841], it being a court of record created by the laws of Indiana, and made oath that on the 25th day of March 1842 he will be eighty‐five years old; that he was born in the State of Maryland; that he is now a resident of [said] county and has been for the [27] years last past; that he has lived in Virginia, Maryland, [and Pennsylvania]; that…” These kinds of problems, matching up cursive to actual text, would seem to play to the absolute best strengths of an LLM, given how much basic language structure the models encode.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  > 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.
- edelbitter 2y ago
  I've seen people do that, and the results are.. just sad. These modern models insert their twitter-era "what grabs attention must be true" view into the very little authentic past we still possess.
  - tptacek 2y ago
    What did 4o get wrong about the title image in the transcription I just gave you?
saagarjha 2y ago
Seems like something that some of those big AI companies that are desperately starved of training material could chip in on, no? Actually do something for the public good, spend a few cents of that VC money, get some high-quality training data out of it?
myth_drannon 2y ago
Why do they need volonteers to manually do it? Open AI models like Microsoft's TrOCR are very effective for handwritten English
demosthanos 2y ago
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 especially easy document to read precisely because it's meant to be the hook to get people to sign up and get started. It isn't going to be representative of the full breadth of documents that the National Archives want people to go through.
- tptacek 2y ago
  OK, fair enough, but can you find one in this article that's hard for an LLM? The gnarliest one I saw, 4o handled instantly, and I went back and looked carefully at the image and the text and I'm sold. Like if this is a crowdsourcing project, why not do a first pass with an LLM and present users with both the image and the best-effort LLM pass? Later I signed up, went to the current missions, and they all seem to post post-1900 and all typeset. They're blurry, but 4o cuts through them like a hot knife through butter.
  - varenc 2y ago
    My guess is because it’s the Smithsonian, they’re just not willing to trust an LLM’s transcription enough to put their name on it. I imagine they’re rather conservative. And maybe some AI-skeptic protectionist sentiments from the professional archivists. Seems like it could change with time though.
    - ugh123 2y ago
      > My guess is because it’s the Smithsonian, they’re just not willing to trust an LLM’s transcription enough to put their name on it. I imagine they’re rather conservative I expect thats a common theme from companies like that, yet I don't think they understand the issue they think they have there. Why not have the LLMs do as much work as possible and have humans review and put their own name on it? Do you think they need to just trust and publish the output of the LLM wholeheartedly? I think too many people saw what a few idiot lawyers did last year and closed the book on LLM usage.
brenainn 2y ago
The Australian War Memorial has a volunteer program for transcribing old letters and diaries and such: https://transcribe.awm.gov.au/ https://transcribe.awm.gov.au/ I gave it a go but it was too hard for me! I write in cursive but I found most of it illegible.
Decabytes 2y ago
I’m interested to give this a go because I want to practice reading cursive. I do a lot of longhand writing including writing all my notes in cursive. It’s exciting to watch my binding fill up with all sorts of different subjects! I like to write in cursive for a few reasons 1. I find it makes my hand cramp less 2. It offers some shallow privacy in public 3. I don’t want to lose the skill 4. It’s fun!
- gabeio 2y ago
  All of the same reasons I love practicing a little calligraphy! I love how it looks as well. I don’t use a special pen but just add my own style to my cursive to make it look even nicer. But I used to write my notes in school with calligraphy (mostly because it gave me an excuse to not care about the subject) but it made the teachers hate me because I would never finish copying their scribbles fast enough.
c0brac0bra 2y ago
I have a family heirloom civil war journal and much of it is unfortunately near undecipherable cursive writing. It would be great if this would eventually develop into some kind of set of open models that would work on content like this.
tkgally 2y ago
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 https://www.masshist.org/database/1774 Marshall wrote more in an article for Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/05/reading-the-peabody-sisters-letters.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/05/reading-the-peab...
- teddyh 2y ago
  > and f’s and s’s were interchanged Could these be instances of the long s, “ſ”, easily confused with an f?
Unearned5161 2y ago
Ok I did one letter, from a woman in 1814 writing to James Monroe (then Secretary of State) asking for a passport to go to Scotland to get her late brother's property. What a trip! So enjoyable to get into the flow once you've "synchronized" with the persons handwriting. Furthermore, due to the fact that you're reading and re-writing word for word of whatever you're transcribing, the stories you end up reading have tremendous memory-stick. This is not surprising, considering that you are dedicating an inordinate amount of time per page, but it's a welcome side effect when you try and recollect.
- jhanschoo 2y ago
  > Furthermore, due to the fact that you're reading and re-writing word for word of whatever you're transcribing, the stories you end up reading have tremendous memory-stick. This is not surprising, considering that you are dedicating an inordinate amount of time per page, but it's a welcome side effect when you try and recollect. This was something I enjoyed when I decided to learn a language by translating short stories. (Edit: Of course, you have to choose an author whose diction you respect. Your unfamiliarity with the target language encourages you to mull over the author's use of diction and the nuances the author is trying to convey, and then find appropriate diction in English. This means you spend a long time immersed in the imagery.)
  - Unearned5161 2y ago
    What a brilliant idea. I've had learning to read French on my list for a while now, I'm going to try transcription as another way at it.
- interludead 2y ago
  I love the idea of "synchronizing" with someone’s handwriting
- Daneel_ 2y ago
  I wish this technique worked for me. I can transcribe something verbatim and then have absolutely no idea what I've written - I have to go back and read it to actually parse the text.
geuis 2y ago
It's a really interesting project. But boy do they make it hard to participate. * Article doesn't provide a direct link to the topic mission * Signup is pretty easy. Well organized and even gently requires you to have two forms of 2FA. * Sign up complete. Go back to the primary page and try to find the mission. A little buried but not too deep. * Notice I'm not signed in. Ok, let's do that. Now I'm back on the main page and navigate back. Find the first document and open it. Really interesting to scan through the doc and to read. People back then generally had really nice handwriting. * Ok, what next, how do I transcribe? ... ? Oh it says I'm not logged in again. Fine, click the link and... * I'm logged in and directed back to the main page, again. Look, this is an interesting project and I'd love to spend my spare cycles to help out. But they really need to clean up this process. Volunteers shouldn't have to jump through kinda poorly designed interfaces to help out.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  The social post embedded in the page links directly to this page with all the instructions. Once I created an account and signed in I just selected a state in the original tab and was right there and could start translating. Do you perhaps have uBlock Origin enabled or some other limitation on Javascript/cookies that might be messing with your login status? The direct link to the mission that was in the social post. https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/revolutionary-war-pension-files https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/revoluti...
- jcoby 2y ago
  I had the exact same experience when I tried to contribute last week. I had to jump between multiple sessions and browsers and eventually managed to log in after about 30 minutes of trying. There is no indication of what is going right or wrong. Once you're in the UI changes very little as well so it's quite easy to miss that you've managed to log in. Once I was logged in I spent another 45 minutes trying to find a document to transcribe. Every single one I found or was given from a challenge had either already been transcribed or was a typewritten document or manifest that the OCR had already done an OK job with. I reviewed a few documents for accuracy, closed the browser, and never went back. It's a shame it's so hard to use. I really was hoping for something I could pop open for 15-30 minutes a day as a break from work and contribute to instead of doing a crossword or watching a video.
seletskiy 2y ago
To tptacek and other guys who seem to have unwavering trust in OCRs/LLMs, as well as to opposite party who think that technology is not there yet — you are all partially right, but somehow fail to hear each other while also spending time on baseless arguing instead of factual examples and attempts to find common truth. Can it be used to greatly simplify efforts by getting through boilerplate? — Yes. Should the result be reviewed and proof-read by human? — Also yes. --- Here subtle one: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/34384201?objectPage=40 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/34384201?objectPage=40 Here is (one of) transcripts made by `o1-pro`: (2) …and I don’t know whether it can be reset for a date in December or not. Cornell seemed anxious that it should not come up too close to Christmas, and of course new suspicion [would be aroused?] [about?] him. I will take this up with the Judge as soon as I can get rid of the brief. Meanwhile I would like to know whether there is anything else in which I can be useful to you, since it behooves me in ways of uncomfortable relations with the present management. Are you going East in December? Has any word come from Hagerman? Were there any noteworthy developments at the hearings on the [Teapot?] trial? I have no inclination yet whether Wheeler will be wanted in Washington, but the chances are that he will not. With regards to all the brethren and [flock?], I am very sincerely yours, George A. H. Fraser I'm not native english speaker, but even I can read where it is wrong. I'll leave it to be an excercise for the reader to find out mistakes, but it is certainly not a Teapot trial. Somehow GPT-4o performs better on this example and fails only on "New Mexican practise" part.
- teddyh 2y ago
  A “Teapot trial” is not actually that farfetched: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Teapot_Dome_scandal&oldid=1266641090 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Teapot_Dome_scand...>
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    Unless you're looking at the writing, that is.
- wriggler 2y ago
  From https://www.handwritingocr.com https://www.handwritingocr.com - seemed to be more accurate, mostly getting the New Mexican and possibly other parts: --- and I don't know whether it can be reset for a date in December or not. Cornell seemed anxious that it should not come off too close to Christmas, and of course New Mexican practice would support him. I will take this up with the Judge and with Hanna the moment I can get rid of the brief. Meanwhile I would like to know whether there is anything else in which I can be useful to you, since it behooves me to be diligent in view of uncomfortable relations with the present management. Are you going East in December? Has any word come from Hagerman? Were there any noteworthy developments at the hearings on the Tenorio tract? I have no intimation yet whether I will be wanted in Washington, but the chances are that I will not. With regards to all the brethren and flock, Dan Very sincerely yours, George H. H. Baser
electricant 2y ago
Today I learned that in the us children are not taught cursive handwriting. This is rather absurd to me. How are they supposed to write?
- animal531 2y ago
  In print? In general its faster to write and a lot easier to read, also you save time by not having to learn two different systems.
  - electricant 2y ago
    Let me disagree. IMHO cursive is faster than print once you get the hang of it. However my point is valid for print too I guess. Regarding time saved and the fact that they are two different systems, I don't get it. Time saved for what? They are not so different, cursive is built on top of print, just optimized for not lifting the pen from the paper too often (hence it is supposedly faster to write).
    - dahart 2y ago
      > However my point is valid for print too I guess. What do you mean? You asked how kids can write without learning cursive, and print is the answer how. What is your point about print? Cursive might be faster for an experienced writer (though Google tells me that claim is debatable), but it takes a long time to get there. I learned cursive as a child, used it for years, and it was never faster than printing, it was much slower. When I say ‘print’, I use an in-between style of half-cursive fast print that isn’t cursive but a lot of people use in practice, and it’s much faster for me that trying to write legible cursive. However cursive is neither faster nor more legible to read, as evidenced by this article and the pages that need translating. If we’re going to compare cursive and print, the metric should be overall speed and accuracy of communication, not how many milliseconds the pen-holder can save while writing something nobody can read. Today, it no longer matters. People type & text mostly, and typing is way faster than either cursive or print. The number of situations that require handwriting continues to decline. We don’t use handwriting enough anymore to develop cursive fluency and efficiency.
euribates 2y ago
Americans... consider reading handwriting a superpower? This explains a lot
jll29 2y ago
Prompt: You are a paleologist specializing in analysis of cursive handwriting; tell me what the following text says: (pasting the picture). Output: The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America. The said James Lambert this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the state of Indiana and at the November Term of said court (1841), it being a court for claims created by the laws of Indiana and makes oath that: "On the 25th day of March 1842, he will be eighty-five years old; that he was born in the state of Maryland; that he is now a resident of said county and has been for the 27 years last past; that he has lived in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania ..."
- nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago
  Might be in the training data: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://revwarapps.org/r6099.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjJtM7fnv-KAxXRT2wGHUwmImcQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0teWHFV1XIfURkqpAFrclt https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...
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ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
They should ask a medical school for help ;) My family is Ivy-League, all the way, and has the worst goddamn cursive writing I've ever seen. It can take me an hour to read a Christmas card from my sister.
- wkjagt 2y ago
  I've always wondered how pharmacists can read those prescriptions. There must be some kind of course in university that they followed.
  - ivanjermakov 2y ago
    I think with experience they know how each medicine is usually written? It's often easier to listen/read when you already know what it is about.
  - valiant55 2y ago
    Not really a problem anymore, it's all been digitized at least for the most part.
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    A lot of it is understanding the abbreviations. "2T BD IAF UF", 2 tablets, twice a day, immediately after food until, finished"
kopirgan 2y ago
Is that true?! US kids don't learn cursive? How do they write?!
- thesagan 2y ago
  Those around me just write a lot more slowly, writing in print (they don’t connect the letters like in cursive, they can’t easily read my very-clean cursive either, which gives a feeling that my cursive is a sort of superpower)
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  - astura 2y ago
    I learned cursive in 2nd grade and was very strictly REQUIRED to use it up until high school, where they stopped requiring cursive. 1) My cursive was always slower than print. I was happy to go back to print so I could write fast. I went to school in the "analog" era, so 100% of all assignments were hand written and not typed. 2) I noticed that literally only 1 person in my school stayed with cursive when printing was an option. It was so unusual it stuck out. 3) I only know one person who writes cursive now in every day life even though 100% of us learned it in school. 4) That person is my dad and he writes in the style of these documents. If you gave me one of these documents and told me my dad wrote it, id believe you. Which makes me think we all somehow were taught cursive wrong or practiced it wrong. My cursive was never fast and never looked like these documents. Anyway, I found this, which summed up my feelings learning cursive perfectly https://nautil.us/cursive-handwriting-and-other-education-myths-236094/ https://nautil.us/cursive-handwriting-and-other-education-my... >Reading and literacy expert Randall Wallace, of Missouri State University, says “it seems odd and perhaps distracting that early readers, just getting used to decoding manuscript, would be asked to learn another writing style.” I found it so frustrating that I just learned how to write one way and then they tell me that's not the "proper" way to write and we need to learn this other way to write.
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SCPlayz7000 2y ago
This is cool.
epgui 2y ago
An army of pharmacists ought to do the trick!
- Adachi91 2y ago
  A dying bread of them, perhaps before they retire. I haven't seen a prescription pad in a decade, it's all electronic now in my part of the southern US, my current pharmacist is so young I don't know if they would even be able to read some of my previous providers writing.
gdubs 2y ago
FWIW since so many people here seem set on the idea that cursive is archaic / useless today, Montessori schools still teach cursive before print because the flowing letters are easier for kids and more similar to drawing, and all the exercises they do around letter tracing. The result is that kids in Montessori learn to read faster and earlier. (They're usually writing in cursive first, which gives them a foundation of the letters and their phonetic sounds, before they begin reading exercises in earnest.)
- ternnoburn 2y ago
  Kids with dysgraphia sometimes can successfully write in cursive and cannot write in block letters. I don't know where I fall on how hard it should be taught, generally, but it's clearly very helpful to some kids.
  - nosioptar 2y ago
    I'm the opposite. Dysgraphia rarely impacts my print writing, my cursive is an absolute mess of cludged up letters that are completely indecipherable.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  There seems to be a whole cultural battle pitting people who don't give a damn, and hardcore cursive fans who will make shift studies after studies to somewhat prove that cursive is the bees' knees. I get the feeling Montessori would mostly appeal to the later crowd. Somewhere in it there must be real science, but damn is it hard to find. At this point I'm more prone to take an out of context look, and try to assert what exactly happened where cursive got phased out, or more generally, how it goes for cultures that don't teach cursive at all. For instance do Korean kids face severe issues because cursive hangul isn't taught in school ? If not, we can go back looking at it like a preference or an alternative that can help in very specific scenarii.
MarkusWandel 2y ago
Curious, how hard is the sample in the article meant to be? I grew up (in the 1970s) in a world in which cursive still ruled. But the variant that we were taught in school was already considerably evolved from the one used by my grandparents, and those were modern compared to the archaic German script ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin ) so I've never thought of myself as good at reading cursive. And of course haven't written (or read) much of it in the decades since. It took about one minute to decipher the first sentence in the sample. Is that considered good these days?
- t1amat 2y ago
  For me, the first sentence was almost immediately readable, I just had to slow down a bit to decipher the name
- ggddv 2y ago
  I’ve found much of the “reading” of cursive of my teachers was just basically snobbery. If it’s illegible but curly, well I just read it wrong! Illegible but straight, you makes it wrong!
- TheRealPomax 2y ago
  They're not "meant to be hard", they're just normal texts. The question is literally "can you read this?" because if you can: "Cool! Want to help transcribe it because the constraining factor when it comes to digitizing cursive is literally how many humans we can get to help out".
- cvoss 2y ago
  Someone with practice at reading old cursive would likely be able to read a sample such as this one at least at a pace suitable for reading aloud. An expert, of course, could do it as fast as if it were their "native" script. Here is an example of a non-expert compared to an expert reading aloud [0]. I learned cursive in school in the early 2000s, but I could never read my grandmother's handwriting. Whenever she mailed me a card, I would have to have my mom read it to me. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRhDClIs8XE&t=165 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRhDClIs8XE&t=165
peter_retief 2y ago
How does one actually sign up?
- kmoser 2y ago
  From https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/register-and-get-started https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/register-and-get-...: > Citizen Archivists must register for a free user account in order to contribute to the National Archives Catalog. Begin the registration process by clicking on the Log in / Sign Up button found in the upper right hand corner of the Catalog. Catalog: https://catalog.archives.gov/ https://catalog.archives.gov/
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jedberg 2y ago
They should hire a bunch of teachers to do this over the summer! Every teacher I know is an expert at reading terrible handwriting.
anonymous_379 2y ago
Why did people use to write like this?
- slater 2y ago
  It's faster than writing out individual letters.
madmask 2y ago
I still write like that
riffic 2y ago
can this be mechanically turked?
paulg2222 2y ago
I can even write cursive. Take that, Zoomers.
throwaway123lol 2y ago
[flagged]
rasengan0 2y ago
Thanks for posting this collective effort. Pretty easy to get started after signing up at login.gov then https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/get-started-transcribing https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/get-started-trans... with video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwQ5pEWWFY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwQ5pEWWFY8 The support forum is https://historyhub.history.gov/citizen_archivists/ https://historyhub.history.gov/citizen_archivists/ to ask questions

257 points by lemonberry 2y ago

My brother in history, I can't even read mine

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 :)

Over2Chars 2y ago

It says "The following is the dedication of James Lambert a soldier of the Revolutionary wars with the Americas." blah blah blah

sayrer 2y ago
Yes, that seems right. Not that difficult. This one suffers from some poor penmanship, though.
Unearned5161 2y ago
I'm not too sure about that reading, I got "The following is the declaration of James Lambert a soldier of the Revolutionary War in South America." rather different
- sayrer 2y ago
  oh, it is "declaration", yes, but not South America. this guy is even on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/James-Lambert-1758-1847-Elaboration-Revolutionary/dp/1438906218 https://www.amazon.com/James-Lambert-1758-1847-Elaboration-R...
- jahewson 2y ago
  I got “North America”
  - ripe 2y ago
    Hmm, interesting: “North America” does make sense, and 4o also seems to transcribe it that way, but the handwriting looks like it says “South America” to me.

Baeocystin 2y ago

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!

MattGaiser 2y ago
I'm 28. I can only read the document in the article with a lot of effort and fiddling with the contrast.
toolslive 2y ago
I'm a middle aged European and I have no issue reading the cursive handwriting shown there. I'm pretty sure there are plenty of (UK) senior citizens who would be thrilled to help out here. The retirement homes are filled with bored people eager to engage in anything.

jncfhnb 2y ago

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

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
> 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.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Your experience is obsolete.
  - BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
    Oh, ok then.
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      I mean, all you have to do is feed the image to ChatGPT, and it will read it basically as well as you can. Denying/downvoting reality is always an option, of course.
      - bigstrat2003 2y ago
        Not being rude was also an option, one you chose not to take for some reason. Seriously, all it would've taken was for you to say something like "there have been a lot of advancements so it's probably different than you remember". This conversation would've gone much smoother for you if you had. And BugsJustFindMe can't downvote you, because it was a reply to him. So don't bite his head off over it. You got downvoted because you were a jerk, plain and simple.
        CamperBob2 2y ago
        Not being rude was also an option Refraining from reflexively pooh-poohing AI with uninformed and/or out-of-date opinions is also an option, but not one often exercised on HN. It gets old not being able to carry on a discussion without squinting at grayed-out text, simply because someone pointed out that humans aren't robots and should no longer have to emulate them.

musicale 2y ago

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.

posterguy 2y ago
i dont think the problem is the lack of resources to learn how to read and write cursive
- jb1991 2y ago
  Except that it does say that in the article, that’s it's a lack of education in reading cursive.
  - posterguy 2y ago
    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.
    - musicale 2y ago
      Maybe linking to the resource. "Learn how to read this document."
  - Levitz 2y ago
    Those two statements aren't at odds with each other. For example, there's a great abundance of resources to learn about music theory and such too, the average person doesn't know such things because they aren't interested.

iambateman 2y ago

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?

aaron695 2y ago
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jonahx 2y ago
I had the same thought but maybe on old hand writing they can't? EDIT: I tried giving the sample to 4o and it gave: The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America. The said James Lambert this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the State of Indiana and at the November Term of said Court (1841), it being a court of record created by the laws of Indiana and made oath that: On the 25th day of March 1842, he will be eighty-five years old, that he was born in the State of Maryland, that he is now a resident of said county and has been for the 27 years last past; that he has lived in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania...
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AdieuToLogic 2y ago
> 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. When done poorly, it can resemble the path walked by a chicken on meth.

zabzonk 2y ago

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

munchler 2y ago
Me too, and I used to be proud of my handwriting back in the 90's. Definitely a loss in self-expression.
dpb001 2y ago
Same here. Old enough to remember when your signature on a credit card receipt would be given a quick look to compare it to the scrawl on the back of the card. If this was still being done I’d probably fail 50% of the transactions I attempt.
- kmoser 2y ago
  Nobody has checked the back of my credit card for the presence of a signature in decades, let alone whether the signature matches. (I also haven't bothered to sign my credit card for this reason, but also because why would I want somebody to have my actual signature if my card is stolen?) These days my "signature" on a credit card purchase is usually a smiley face. Nobody has ever complained.
  - dpb001 2y ago
    Yup, it’s been decades - I remember it happening with the carbon copy imprinting devices and it may have been more common in the US rural South where I was working at the time. The squiggles I fingerpaint on checkout screens now are my version of your smiley face.

jb1991 2y ago

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

jghn 2y ago
Why would they? It’s an anachronism optimizing for writing speed
- hardbants 2y ago
  [dead]
- galangalalgol 2y ago
  They started teaching it again because it correlated with better outcomes for things seemingly unrelated to writing. And it was important to learn it before typing supposedly. There is probably some better way to accomplish whatever it is actually doing, but they don't seem to know that.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  I agree that cursive handwriting has become useless. As a child, even many years before having access to personal computers or any other kind of typewriting, I have switched my handwriting from cursive to using the kind of sans-serif typefaces used in technical drawing and since then I have never written again cursively, with the exception of my signature, where required on official documents. Nevertheless, I believe that some kind of calligraphy is necessary for developing fine motor skills in children, unless it is replaced with some other activity that requires a similar precision in the movements of the fingers and of the hand.
_pktm_ 2y ago
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.

jez 2y ago

The handwriting in some of these snippets, while sometimes difficult to read for one reason or another, is nonetheless beautiful: did everyone who wrote have such great handwriting back then? I'm looking at the piece in the Instagram post linked by the page, which begins, "honor of holding in their service". The lines are so straight, the letters are so uniform!

cyberax 2y ago
Handwriting is a skill, you get better with practice! A lot of bad handwriting stems from using it to write down things quickly (see: https://imgur.com/doctors-strike-5ANma https://imgur.com/doctors-strike-5ANma ). If you instead focus on doing slow calligraphy, your handwriting can improve rapidly.
999900000999 2y ago
Widespread literacy is an extremely recent phenomenon. I highly doubt most people could write that well
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  The US is an extreme outlier with regards to a high rate of literacy compared to almost everywhere else during the 1600-1800s. Today is a different story, Massachusetts had a higher rate of literacy when education was made compulsory in the 19th century than it does currently, which is kind of astounding. > Sheldon Richman quotes data showing that from 1650 to 1795, American male literacy climbed from 60 to 90 percent. Between 1800 and 1840 literacy in the North rose from 75 percent to between 91 and 97 percent. In the South the rate grew from about 55 percent to 81 percent. Richman also quotes evidence indicating that literacy in Massachusetts was 98 percent on the eve of legislated compulsion and is about 91 percent today. https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=307 https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=307
  - 999900000999 2y ago
    I'm happy to be proven wrong. Any reason for this being an American thing? I'd still assume fine penmanship was a mark of the upper class though

tptacek 2y ago

Isn't this like a bread-and-butter AI task? “The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America.” “The said James Lambert, on this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the State of Indiana, at the November Term of said Court [1841], it being a court of record created by the laws of Indiana, and made oath that on the 25th day of March 1842 he will be eighty‐five years old; that he was born in the State of Maryland; that he is now a resident of [said] county and has been for the [27] years last past; that he has lived in Virginia, Maryland, [and Pennsylvania]; that…” These kinds of problems, matching up cursive to actual text, would seem to play to the absolute best strengths of an LLM, given how much basic language structure the models encode.

saagarjha 2y ago
> 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.
edelbitter 2y ago
I've seen people do that, and the results are.. just sad. These modern models insert their twitter-era "what grabs attention must be true" view into the very little authentic past we still possess.
- tptacek 2y ago
  What did 4o get wrong about the title image in the transcription I just gave you?

saagarjha 2y ago

Seems like something that some of those big AI companies that are desperately starved of training material could chip in on, no? Actually do something for the public good, spend a few cents of that VC money, get some high-quality training data out of it?

myth_drannon 2y ago

Why do they need volonteers to manually do it? Open AI models like Microsoft's TrOCR are very effective for handwritten English

demosthanos 2y ago

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 especially easy document to read precisely because it's meant to be the hook to get people to sign up and get started. It isn't going to be representative of the full breadth of documents that the National Archives want people to go through.

tptacek 2y ago
OK, fair enough, but can you find one in this article that's hard for an LLM? The gnarliest one I saw, 4o handled instantly, and I went back and looked carefully at the image and the text and I'm sold. Like if this is a crowdsourcing project, why not do a first pass with an LLM and present users with both the image and the best-effort LLM pass? Later I signed up, went to the current missions, and they all seem to post post-1900 and all typeset. They're blurry, but 4o cuts through them like a hot knife through butter.
- varenc 2y ago
  My guess is because it’s the Smithsonian, they’re just not willing to trust an LLM’s transcription enough to put their name on it. I imagine they’re rather conservative. And maybe some AI-skeptic protectionist sentiments from the professional archivists. Seems like it could change with time though.
  - ugh123 2y ago
    > My guess is because it’s the Smithsonian, they’re just not willing to trust an LLM’s transcription enough to put their name on it. I imagine they’re rather conservative I expect thats a common theme from companies like that, yet I don't think they understand the issue they think they have there. Why not have the LLMs do as much work as possible and have humans review and put their own name on it? Do you think they need to just trust and publish the output of the LLM wholeheartedly? I think too many people saw what a few idiot lawyers did last year and closed the book on LLM usage.

brenainn 2y ago

The Australian War Memorial has a volunteer program for transcribing old letters and diaries and such: https://transcribe.awm.gov.au/ https://transcribe.awm.gov.au/ I gave it a go but it was too hard for me! I write in cursive but I found most of it illegible.

Decabytes 2y ago

I’m interested to give this a go because I want to practice reading cursive. I do a lot of longhand writing including writing all my notes in cursive. It’s exciting to watch my binding fill up with all sorts of different subjects! I like to write in cursive for a few reasons 1. I find it makes my hand cramp less 2. It offers some shallow privacy in public 3. I don’t want to lose the skill 4. It’s fun!

gabeio 2y ago
All of the same reasons I love practicing a little calligraphy! I love how it looks as well. I don’t use a special pen but just add my own style to my cursive to make it look even nicer. But I used to write my notes in school with calligraphy (mostly because it gave me an excuse to not care about the subject) but it made the teachers hate me because I would never finish copying their scribbles fast enough.

c0brac0bra 2y ago

I have a family heirloom civil war journal and much of it is unfortunately near undecipherable cursive writing. It would be great if this would eventually develop into some kind of set of open models that would work on content like this.

tkgally 2y ago

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 https://www.masshist.org/database/1774 Marshall wrote more in an article for Slate: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/05/reading-the-peabody-sisters-letters.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/05/reading-the-peab...

teddyh 2y ago
> and f’s and s’s were interchanged Could these be instances of the long s, “ſ”, easily confused with an f?

Unearned5161 2y ago

Ok I did one letter, from a woman in 1814 writing to James Monroe (then Secretary of State) asking for a passport to go to Scotland to get her late brother's property. What a trip! So enjoyable to get into the flow once you've "synchronized" with the persons handwriting. Furthermore, due to the fact that you're reading and re-writing word for word of whatever you're transcribing, the stories you end up reading have tremendous memory-stick. This is not surprising, considering that you are dedicating an inordinate amount of time per page, but it's a welcome side effect when you try and recollect.

jhanschoo 2y ago
> Furthermore, due to the fact that you're reading and re-writing word for word of whatever you're transcribing, the stories you end up reading have tremendous memory-stick. This is not surprising, considering that you are dedicating an inordinate amount of time per page, but it's a welcome side effect when you try and recollect. This was something I enjoyed when I decided to learn a language by translating short stories. (Edit: Of course, you have to choose an author whose diction you respect. Your unfamiliarity with the target language encourages you to mull over the author's use of diction and the nuances the author is trying to convey, and then find appropriate diction in English. This means you spend a long time immersed in the imagery.)
- Unearned5161 2y ago
  What a brilliant idea. I've had learning to read French on my list for a while now, I'm going to try transcription as another way at it.
interludead 2y ago
I love the idea of "synchronizing" with someone’s handwriting
Daneel_ 2y ago
I wish this technique worked for me. I can transcribe something verbatim and then have absolutely no idea what I've written - I have to go back and read it to actually parse the text.

geuis 2y ago

It's a really interesting project. But boy do they make it hard to participate. * Article doesn't provide a direct link to the topic mission * Signup is pretty easy. Well organized and even gently requires you to have two forms of 2FA. * Sign up complete. Go back to the primary page and try to find the mission. A little buried but not too deep. * Notice I'm not signed in. Ok, let's do that. Now I'm back on the main page and navigate back. Find the first document and open it. Really interesting to scan through the doc and to read. People back then generally had really nice handwriting. * Ok, what next, how do I transcribe? ... ? Oh it says I'm not logged in again. Fine, click the link and... * I'm logged in and directed back to the main page, again. Look, this is an interesting project and I'd love to spend my spare cycles to help out. But they really need to clean up this process. Volunteers shouldn't have to jump through kinda poorly designed interfaces to help out.

rtkwe 2y ago
The social post embedded in the page links directly to this page with all the instructions. Once I created an account and signed in I just selected a state in the original tab and was right there and could start translating. Do you perhaps have uBlock Origin enabled or some other limitation on Javascript/cookies that might be messing with your login status? The direct link to the mission that was in the social post. https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/revolutionary-war-pension-files https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/missions/revoluti...
jcoby 2y ago
I had the exact same experience when I tried to contribute last week. I had to jump between multiple sessions and browsers and eventually managed to log in after about 30 minutes of trying. There is no indication of what is going right or wrong. Once you're in the UI changes very little as well so it's quite easy to miss that you've managed to log in. Once I was logged in I spent another 45 minutes trying to find a document to transcribe. Every single one I found or was given from a challenge had either already been transcribed or was a typewritten document or manifest that the OCR had already done an OK job with. I reviewed a few documents for accuracy, closed the browser, and never went back. It's a shame it's so hard to use. I really was hoping for something I could pop open for 15-30 minutes a day as a break from work and contribute to instead of doing a crossword or watching a video.

seletskiy 2y ago

To tptacek and other guys who seem to have unwavering trust in OCRs/LLMs, as well as to opposite party who think that technology is not there yet — you are all partially right, but somehow fail to hear each other while also spending time on baseless arguing instead of factual examples and attempts to find common truth. Can it be used to greatly simplify efforts by getting through boilerplate? — Yes. Should the result be reviewed and proof-read by human? — Also yes. --- Here subtle one: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/34384201?objectPage=40 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/34384201?objectPage=40 Here is (one of) transcripts made by `o1-pro`: (2) …and I don’t know whether it can be reset for a date in December or not. Cornell seemed anxious that it should not come up too close to Christmas, and of course new suspicion [would be aroused?] [about?] him. I will take this up with the Judge as soon as I can get rid of the brief. Meanwhile I would like to know whether there is anything else in which I can be useful to you, since it behooves me in ways of uncomfortable relations with the present management. Are you going East in December? Has any word come from Hagerman? Were there any noteworthy developments at the hearings on the [Teapot?] trial? I have no inclination yet whether Wheeler will be wanted in Washington, but the chances are that he will not. With regards to all the brethren and [flock?], I am very sincerely yours, George A. H. Fraser I'm not native english speaker, but even I can read where it is wrong. I'll leave it to be an excercise for the reader to find out mistakes, but it is certainly not a Teapot trial. Somehow GPT-4o performs better on this example and fails only on "New Mexican practise" part.

teddyh 2y ago
A “Teapot trial” is not actually that farfetched: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Teapot_Dome_scandal&oldid=1266641090 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Teapot_Dome_scand...>
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Unless you're looking at the writing, that is.
wriggler 2y ago
From https://www.handwritingocr.com https://www.handwritingocr.com - seemed to be more accurate, mostly getting the New Mexican and possibly other parts: --- and I don't know whether it can be reset for a date in December or not. Cornell seemed anxious that it should not come off too close to Christmas, and of course New Mexican practice would support him. I will take this up with the Judge and with Hanna the moment I can get rid of the brief. Meanwhile I would like to know whether there is anything else in which I can be useful to you, since it behooves me to be diligent in view of uncomfortable relations with the present management. Are you going East in December? Has any word come from Hagerman? Were there any noteworthy developments at the hearings on the Tenorio tract? I have no intimation yet whether I will be wanted in Washington, but the chances are that I will not. With regards to all the brethren and flock, Dan Very sincerely yours, George H. H. Baser

electricant 2y ago

Today I learned that in the us children are not taught cursive handwriting. This is rather absurd to me. How are they supposed to write?

animal531 2y ago
In print? In general its faster to write and a lot easier to read, also you save time by not having to learn two different systems.
- electricant 2y ago
  Let me disagree. IMHO cursive is faster than print once you get the hang of it. However my point is valid for print too I guess. Regarding time saved and the fact that they are two different systems, I don't get it. Time saved for what? They are not so different, cursive is built on top of print, just optimized for not lifting the pen from the paper too often (hence it is supposedly faster to write).
  - dahart 2y ago
    > However my point is valid for print too I guess. What do you mean? You asked how kids can write without learning cursive, and print is the answer how. What is your point about print? Cursive might be faster for an experienced writer (though Google tells me that claim is debatable), but it takes a long time to get there. I learned cursive as a child, used it for years, and it was never faster than printing, it was much slower. When I say ‘print’, I use an in-between style of half-cursive fast print that isn’t cursive but a lot of people use in practice, and it’s much faster for me that trying to write legible cursive. However cursive is neither faster nor more legible to read, as evidenced by this article and the pages that need translating. If we’re going to compare cursive and print, the metric should be overall speed and accuracy of communication, not how many milliseconds the pen-holder can save while writing something nobody can read. Today, it no longer matters. People type & text mostly, and typing is way faster than either cursive or print. The number of situations that require handwriting continues to decline. We don’t use handwriting enough anymore to develop cursive fluency and efficiency.

euribates 2y ago

Americans... consider reading handwriting a superpower? This explains a lot

jll29 2y ago

Prompt: You are a paleologist specializing in analysis of cursive handwriting; tell me what the following text says: (pasting the picture). Output: The following is the declaration of James Lambert, a soldier of the Revolutionary War in North America. The said James Lambert this day personally appeared in the Probate Court of the County of Dearborn in the state of Indiana and at the November Term of said court (1841), it being a court for claims created by the laws of Indiana and makes oath that: "On the 25th day of March 1842, he will be eighty-five years old; that he was born in the state of Maryland; that he is now a resident of said county and has been for the 27 years last past; that he has lived in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania ..."

nejsjsjsbsb 2y ago
Might be in the training data: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://revwarapps.org/r6099.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjJtM7fnv-KAxXRT2wGHUwmImcQFnoECA8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw0teWHFV1XIfURkqpAFrclt https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...
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ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

They should ask a medical school for help ;) My family is Ivy-League, all the way, and has the worst goddamn cursive writing I've ever seen. It can take me an hour to read a Christmas card from my sister.

wkjagt 2y ago
I've always wondered how pharmacists can read those prescriptions. There must be some kind of course in university that they followed.
- ivanjermakov 2y ago
  I think with experience they know how each medicine is usually written? It's often easier to listen/read when you already know what it is about.
- valiant55 2y ago
  Not really a problem anymore, it's all been digitized at least for the most part.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  A lot of it is understanding the abbreviations. "2T BD IAF UF", 2 tablets, twice a day, immediately after food until, finished"

kopirgan 2y ago

Is that true?! US kids don't learn cursive? How do they write?!

thesagan 2y ago
Those around me just write a lot more slowly, writing in print (they don’t connect the letters like in cursive, they can’t easily read my very-clean cursive either, which gives a feeling that my cursive is a sort of superpower)
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- astura 2y ago
  I learned cursive in 2nd grade and was very strictly REQUIRED to use it up until high school, where they stopped requiring cursive. 1) My cursive was always slower than print. I was happy to go back to print so I could write fast. I went to school in the "analog" era, so 100% of all assignments were hand written and not typed. 2) I noticed that literally only 1 person in my school stayed with cursive when printing was an option. It was so unusual it stuck out. 3) I only know one person who writes cursive now in every day life even though 100% of us learned it in school. 4) That person is my dad and he writes in the style of these documents. If you gave me one of these documents and told me my dad wrote it, id believe you. Which makes me think we all somehow were taught cursive wrong or practiced it wrong. My cursive was never fast and never looked like these documents. Anyway, I found this, which summed up my feelings learning cursive perfectly https://nautil.us/cursive-handwriting-and-other-education-myths-236094/ https://nautil.us/cursive-handwriting-and-other-education-my... >Reading and literacy expert Randall Wallace, of Missouri State University, says “it seems odd and perhaps distracting that early readers, just getting used to decoding manuscript, would be asked to learn another writing style.” I found it so frustrating that I just learned how to write one way and then they tell me that's not the "proper" way to write and we need to learn this other way to write.
  - kopirgan 2y ago

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SCPlayz7000 2y ago

This is cool.

epgui 2y ago

An army of pharmacists ought to do the trick!

Adachi91 2y ago
A dying bread of them, perhaps before they retire. I haven't seen a prescription pad in a decade, it's all electronic now in my part of the southern US, my current pharmacist is so young I don't know if they would even be able to read some of my previous providers writing.

gdubs 2y ago

FWIW since so many people here seem set on the idea that cursive is archaic / useless today, Montessori schools still teach cursive before print because the flowing letters are easier for kids and more similar to drawing, and all the exercises they do around letter tracing. The result is that kids in Montessori learn to read faster and earlier. (They're usually writing in cursive first, which gives them a foundation of the letters and their phonetic sounds, before they begin reading exercises in earnest.)

ternnoburn 2y ago
Kids with dysgraphia sometimes can successfully write in cursive and cannot write in block letters. I don't know where I fall on how hard it should be taught, generally, but it's clearly very helpful to some kids.
- nosioptar 2y ago
  I'm the opposite. Dysgraphia rarely impacts my print writing, my cursive is an absolute mess of cludged up letters that are completely indecipherable.
makeitdouble 2y ago
There seems to be a whole cultural battle pitting people who don't give a damn, and hardcore cursive fans who will make shift studies after studies to somewhat prove that cursive is the bees' knees. I get the feeling Montessori would mostly appeal to the later crowd. Somewhere in it there must be real science, but damn is it hard to find. At this point I'm more prone to take an out of context look, and try to assert what exactly happened where cursive got phased out, or more generally, how it goes for cultures that don't teach cursive at all. For instance do Korean kids face severe issues because cursive hangul isn't taught in school ? If not, we can go back looking at it like a preference or an alternative that can help in very specific scenarii.

MarkusWandel 2y ago

Curious, how hard is the sample in the article meant to be? I grew up (in the 1970s) in a world in which cursive still ruled. But the variant that we were taught in school was already considerably evolved from the one used by my grandparents, and those were modern compared to the archaic German script ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin ) so I've never thought of myself as good at reading cursive. And of course haven't written (or read) much of it in the decades since. It took about one minute to decipher the first sentence in the sample. Is that considered good these days?

t1amat 2y ago
For me, the first sentence was almost immediately readable, I just had to slow down a bit to decipher the name
ggddv 2y ago
I’ve found much of the “reading” of cursive of my teachers was just basically snobbery. If it’s illegible but curly, well I just read it wrong! Illegible but straight, you makes it wrong!
TheRealPomax 2y ago
They're not "meant to be hard", they're just normal texts. The question is literally "can you read this?" because if you can: "Cool! Want to help transcribe it because the constraining factor when it comes to digitizing cursive is literally how many humans we can get to help out".
cvoss 2y ago
Someone with practice at reading old cursive would likely be able to read a sample such as this one at least at a pace suitable for reading aloud. An expert, of course, could do it as fast as if it were their "native" script. Here is an example of a non-expert compared to an expert reading aloud [0]. I learned cursive in school in the early 2000s, but I could never read my grandmother's handwriting. Whenever she mailed me a card, I would have to have my mom read it to me. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRhDClIs8XE&t=165 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRhDClIs8XE&t=165

peter_retief 2y ago

How does one actually sign up?

kmoser 2y ago
From https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/register-and-get-started https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/register-and-get-...: > Citizen Archivists must register for a free user account in order to contribute to the National Archives Catalog. Begin the registration process by clicking on the Log in / Sign Up button found in the upper right hand corner of the Catalog. Catalog: https://catalog.archives.gov/ https://catalog.archives.gov/

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jedberg 2y ago

They should hire a bunch of teachers to do this over the summer! Every teacher I know is an expert at reading terrible handwriting.

anonymous_379 2y ago

Why did people use to write like this?

slater 2y ago
It's faster than writing out individual letters.

madmask 2y ago

I still write like that

riffic 2y ago

can this be mechanically turked?

paulg2222 2y ago

I can even write cursive. Take that, Zoomers.

throwaway123lol 2y ago

[flagged]

rasengan0 2y ago

Thanks for posting this collective effort. Pretty easy to get started after signing up at login.gov then https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/get-started-transcribing https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist/get-started-trans... with video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwQ5pEWWFY8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwQ5pEWWFY8 The support forum is https://historyhub.history.gov/citizen_archivists/ https://historyhub.history.gov/citizen_archivists/ to ask questions