People who can read English cursive, does the US National Archive have a fun opportunity for you! apple.news/A51AaXZQZTXK... - ThreadSky

lindsaypcohn.bsky.social • 50 days ago

People who can read English cursive, does the US National Archive have a fun opportunity for you!

https://apple.news/A51AaXZQZTXKnhwSBKEkw6Q

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kcbaby66.bsky.social•50 days ago

What have we come to. People can’t read cursive or drive a manual transmission?

rebel-librarian.bsky.social•49 days ago

Love this! Getting my glasses out and signing up tonight.

michaelorenz.bsky.social•50 days ago

This is not cursive, it is latin.

glendabau.bsky.social•50 days ago

The sad part is my first thought was 'we all can' then immediately afterward 'possibly not'. They don't teach cursive anymore? That is sad. And clearly I am showing my age.

jcamacholegal.bsky.social•50 days ago

My assistant is 24 years old and has a hard time reading my writing bc I write in mixed cursive and print. She never learned cursive.

woodenwood.bsky.social•49 days ago

I can even read my own cursive.

jlp2008.bsky.social•49 days ago

I'm already doing this on a volunteer basis for the Library of Congress, which has a similar need.

lindsaypcohn.bsky.social•50 days ago

As an undergrad I did a minor in medieval studies and spent half my time in the rare book room looking at primary sources, so 18th cent cursive is usually a breeze 😎

lindsaypcohn.bsky.social•50 days ago

OTOH, my cursive writing is terrible. I learnt to write in Engl, where we were forced to use fountain pens and write in italics (everything is triangles). I was supposed to learn cursive back in the US, but broke my right arm and was in a cast up to my shoulder and immobilizing two fingers, so …

crankysocrates.bsky.social•50 days ago

Fountain pens!?

blackswamphattie.bsky.social•50 days ago

Those of us who collect and use fountain pens find your shock amusing. 😁

crankysocrates.bsky.social•50 days ago

I use fountain pens! I'm shocked at *children* using fountain pens. I started learning cursive in 1st grade. I would have broken so many nibs!😝

blackswamphattie.bsky.social•49 days ago

We home educate. My children do a ton of penmanship. We use fountain pens for it in the upper grades with Spencerian script. 😁 So far, no broke nibs.

etche.bsky.social•49 days ago

In France my kids had to bring in (to learn writing with) crappy fountain pens. Lots of plastic cartridges, too 😐 My own much nicer pen has a refillable cartridge but still.

eclecticettoc.bsky.social•50 days ago

That's how I learned how to write in first grade. In public school, in France, in the early 1990's, in script "attaché" as we say here.

castornestor.bsky.social•49 days ago

A teacher from Howard University told us that in the US kids weren’t thought to be fully developmentally ready to write cursive at 6. We were high school students raised in the french system, so we were surprised, to say the least.

laurentregz.bsky.social•49 days ago

I work at a Montessori school and have seen 4-5 year olds writing in cursive... Just certain letters at first. Depends on how interested the child is of course. All about the pincer grasp, slowly building that skill. Many of the 5 year olds were writing full sentences in cursive.

eclecticettoc.bsky.social•49 days ago

I can understand !

mariebelanger.bsky.social•50 days ago

Aaack! I am shocked! I can read those documents with ease!

artpen.bsky.social•49 days ago

There's a bunch of projects like that, and other science and arts citizen participation projects, on Zooniverse https://www.zooniverse.org/projects

teddyelaine.bsky.social•50 days ago

I did something similar a while back that was transcribing field notes of bird sightings. It was really interesting. Thanks for sharing this!

emilyjane92.bsky.social•50 days ago

I took a historiography class and struggled through transcribing the primary source letters from our college founder… but I’m tempted to give this a try.

virgilkay.bsky.social•50 days ago

Cursive, runes, the usual

brickmaker.bsky.social•50 days ago

Why would they not pay people I wonder? Plenty of researchers have had to read cursive, across many languages, and have this skill.

aubergeniuslab.bsky.social•49 days ago

They need volunteers because there is barely money in the budget as it is. Archives and libraries, for all their cultural significance and importance, are chronically underfunded.

brickmaker.bsky.social•48 days ago

Indeed, having worked in both, I recognize this. However, I don’t know that volunteers solve that problem.

aubergeniuslab.bsky.social•48 days ago

Better than incremental progress than none, and there are people who will happily volunteer to do this work. I don't know that there is a better, more accessible solution than this in play.

wingedhussar.bsky.social•50 days ago

I can read that, but not as easily as I used to. Probably doesn't help that I don't write in cursive.

queenbre.bsky.social•50 days ago

Ooooh, I’m definitely going to do that! How exciting!

ckjohnsonbk.bsky.social•50 days ago

My college student child is in London right now, reading 19th century trade documents, getting a crash course in reading cursive. Kinda wild that this is a dying skill!

lexie1179.bsky.social•49 days ago

Yes, and I can write it too.

aubydauby.bsky.social•50 days ago

I know some landman who could knock this shit OUT

leonalee.bsky.social•49 days ago

old-school nerds unite, this is our time!!!

photonthief.com•49 days ago

One of my goals for this year is to improve my cursive handwriting. I hadn't used it for years and was a bit upset by how messy it had gotten when I wrote Christmas cards to my clients last year. I have a long way to go, but I'm getting there 😊

isurusbichurus.bsky.social•49 days ago

Keep it up! i taught myself cursive in highschool because my handrwiting was UGLY but instead my handwriting became pretty and illegible 😅

luigigi.bsky.social•49 days ago

Your script is excellent. But if you want to be fancier etc go for it.

photonthief.com•49 days ago

Thank you 😊 Fancier would be nice, but my main goal at the moment is to get more consistent and make less mistakes.

hyperestis.bsky.social•49 days ago

I used Write Now from Getty-Dubay over the pandemic and I write in a legible italic cursive now.

querrieoh.bsky.social•47 days ago

Maybe my own *** writing has lowered my standards, but I think yours is very nice. I def see lots of consistency in angle, shapes, spacing, etc

cairanne.bsky.social•50 days ago

I can read cursive. Had to decipher a whole bunch of it for my Uni dissertation.

poundsterling.bsky.social•49 days ago

I'm surprised this isn't a solved problem in computer vision

thedaveno.bsky.social•49 days ago

Thank you for posting this. I am now on my 3rd document in this super fun new hobby!

lindsaypcohn.bsky.social•49 days ago

That is awesome!!

tisemi.bsky.social•50 days ago

That’s rather sad. Somewhere between my 23 year old and my 14 year old is where cursive stopped being taught. They all can sign their names at least.

sujue.bsky.social•48 days ago

I could read that although spelling has changed some of the words

gersherlock.bsky.social•49 days ago

I joined up last night and transcribed a number of papers relating to pension application for someone who took part in the revolutionary war. I found it fascinating. Will definitely be doing more of it

lindsaypcohn.bsky.social•49 days ago

That’s incredible! So interesting. I love it!

gersherlock.bsky.social•49 days ago

Reading through and transcribing affidavits, it almost felt I was being transported to a justice's of the peace office in early-mid 19th century Ohio.

smilo998.bsky.social•50 days ago

Is cursive silly for handwritten?

edjoelink.bsky.social•50 days ago

I get so angry that they are not teaching cursive. If I had human children, they would learn cursive! I bet my dogs could understand it, but they don't have opposable thumbs😂😭

eclecticettoc.bsky.social•50 days ago

In France, kids are still thought to read and write this way... and fountain pens were mandatory when I was in first grade (1991). The first pic is my handwriting when I try to do it nice. Second is when I take notes at work.

photonthief.com•49 days ago

Beautiful!

jsargentr.bsky.social•50 days ago

There is something perverse about our economic culture where billions are poured into crap AI, but real capacity to read and interpret important material is unpaid.

johncastiglione.bsky.social•50 days ago

Not related but maybe related - kids with handwriting/spelling difficulty often do really well when they learn cursive in ~ third grade (something about re-routing the brain pathways). So increased school use of computers/voice-text/AI robs these kids of a way to succeed and excel.

jsargentr.bsky.social•50 days ago

I think a lot of neuro-intellectual capacity is lost by skipping handwriting and cursive. And some fine motor skills, too.

johncastiglione.bsky.social•50 days ago

It’s true eating of the seed corn. Like not struggling though learning to ride a bike - just slap on the training wheels forever.

The slow, repetitive, physical yet precise work of learning something like that is exactly what kids DON’T get enough of.

jsargentr.bsky.social•50 days ago

Nuanced Touch/Pull is one I'm struggling with with my son. Like, only pulling *hard enough*, understanding there are points like that in an action. A lot of handwriting teaches that principle - we don't even remember learning it, but we take it forward.

johncastiglione.bsky.social•50 days ago

It’s funny we’ve been doing this with my third grader who’s going through this stuff and it took me a while but my wrist just *remembers* how to do cursive. Like letting the force flow through me. It’s tough though how to teach that to someone who physically can’t yet relax and get the words out.

truebluemajority.bsky.social•50 days ago

ooo that looks like fun and I am an expert at reading scrawly handwriting

I'll check it out

vicjim.bsky.social•50 days ago

🤣😂🤣

inkygeek.com•49 days ago

I posted this to a quote-reply, here it is again:

https://bsky.app/profile/inkygeek.com/post/3lflfinacmc2y

trixiedixon.bsky.social•50 days ago

What?!? Not only can I read it, I write it.

remainvoter.bsky.social•50 days ago

Me too!

ronnpiano.bsky.social•50 days ago

This is astonishing. Writing and reading cursive is not difficult. It's not like trying to read some minuscule from Eastern Europe.

70south.bsky.social•50 days ago

Reading cursive from past centuries can be quite challenging.

70south.bsky.social•50 days ago

In my experience, anyway.

inkrasands.bsky.social•50 days ago

I agree. I can read modern cursive, but cursive from long ago, no. Also, by "modern cursive" I mean the cursive that's not really fancy, like the cursive I prefer despite having a hard time reading it. If I could, though, I'd have my settings set up so posts show up in cursive for me.

jenk3.bsky.social•49 days ago

📌

nuthatchme.bsky.social•50 days ago

I usually point commenters at other places who bemoan the fact that kids no longer learn cursive to the Archive and challenge them to decipher a paragraph or two.

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