The Core

Why We Are Here => Water Cooler => Topic started by: buckworks on January 26, 2025, 05:10:39 PM

Title: Can You Read Cursive?
Post by: buckworks on January 26, 2025, 05:10:39 PM
Can you read cursive? It's a superpower the National Archives is looking for.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/12/national-archives-needs-citizen-archivists-cursive/77493951007/
Title: Re: Can You Read Cursive?
Post by: littleman on January 27, 2025, 01:46:38 AM
Definitely not my superpower, cursive and also elaborate digital fonts do take me longer to decode than the average person.
Title: Re: Can You Read Cursive?
Post by: ergophobe on January 28, 2025, 01:37:54 AM
Saw that. It kind of is my superpower, or was. A bit rusty now though.

I specialized in 16th century, which has a reputation as being difficult (because it's a period of rapid evolution so there tends to be more variation than in, say, the 14th or 18th centuries). But the one you do the most is always the easiest. I always found the looped late 17th through 18th centuries to be rather hard.

QuoteFamilySearch developed an AI program that reads handwritten documents. However, a person is still required to do the final edit.

I feel like reading handwriting today is where OCR was in about 1995.