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Palaeography: reading old handwriting
"The huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. The oredr of the ltteers in the wrod can be in a total mses but you can sitll raed it wouthit any porbelm.
While this way of reading and comprehending whole words at a glance is very useful in the modern world, it can lead to incomprehension and mistakes when trying to read documents written in an old and unfamiliar style of handwriting.
Be prepared to tackle an old document letter by letter if necessary. If you cannot identify a letter, leave it out, or put in a suggestion of what you think it is, perhaps with a question mark by it. Do a few more lines and then go back to see if you can now identify the letter. Or see if you have already come across it and understood it somewhere else in the document."
Palaeography: reading old handwriting
1500 - 1800
A practical online tutorial
The National Archives, U.K.
[Thanks Christine!]
March 8, 2005 in Writing | Permalink
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Comments
That opening quote with the letters all scrambled... yeah. Variations on that have been circulating on the web for a while and while it's interesting science, on behalf of dyslexics everywhere, "CUT IT OUT!"
Seriously, though, as a mildly dyslexic person, I can vouch that there are some of us who have to concentrate and go word by word, or letter by letter, when reading modern English printed in a clear font. So, in fact, every paragraph looks like that opening "scrambled" bit in this article.
-Alia, Just another agnostic dyslexic wondering if there is a Dog ;)
Posted by: Alia | Mar 9, 2005 9:13:59 AM
