Description

Media: EBOOK - download
File Format: PDF, 3MB (36 pages)
Author: G. Jaunay
Year: 2011
ISBN: 9781921956645
Other: b&w photos, glossary, index
Publisher: Unlock the Past

Sooner or later, family historians will come across a major obstacle in progressing their research - old handwriting can be difficult to resolve and this booklet is designed to overcome some of these problems.

The problem rests on the fact that most of us unknowingly read by identifying whole words by their shape rather than looking at individual letters. When we come across unfamiliar writing, we are forced to look at the individual letters in their context. The unexpected shapes of old letters and a multitude of shortcuts in writing results in considerable difficulties for modern readers, and this booklet provides some strategies to overcome this problem.

There are a number of books on this subject, but, apart from the practical advice within, a strength of this publication lies in the number of actual examples to help the researcher identify seemingly meaningless words.

Early parish registers often have some level of Latin in their content. This book contains a useful dictionary of the more common words that may be encountered in parish registers containing Latin.

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Contents:

Introduction
The issues behind the problems
Understanding old handwriting
How to tackle the problem
Roundhand
A modern problem or two
Common letter forms of the 17th to 19th century
Some problem letters in Secretary Hand
Common ligatures in Secretary Hand
Suspensions and ligatures associated with q
Relationships that may differ from today's meanings
19th Century Copperplate style
Round hand example transcriptions
Chancery hand example with transcription
Common Latin words encountered in texts

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3 Reviews

A Very Useful Book
5
Posted by Kylie Willison on 9th Jun 2023

The Ebook is useful for comparing handwriting examples on my computer.
Cracking the Code ebook
4
Posted by Dianne Myers on 9th Aug 2022

I love all the e-books in the unlock my past series, and this one was particularly useful as a reference when trying to interpret some old Wills that I had found
Old Handwriting
4
Posted by chas_on on 31st Mar 2021

Very useful and very easy to learn from. If you have any old English books or documents to decipher, read this book first - it will help a lot in your deciphering the old text.

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