Deciphering English Script: Tutorials from Brigham Young University

We’ve all got friends and relatives with seemingly indecipherable handwriting, but as any historian knows, even the messiest scrawl from today doesn’t have a patch on early modern script.

Which is why, thankfully, Brigham Young University is offering a free tutorial on understanding English script.

The guide takes you through how text in pre-1750 documents was typically written, and how it differs from what we write today. It offers not only advice and tips on how to decipher this text, but provides links to external sample texts, which you can use to polish your skills before jumping into the archive.

Old English script takes a while to get used to, but learning how to decipher it is a skill well worth having. It opens up far more records to your research, and if nothing else gives you decent bragging rights at genealogy conventions.

The link to these tutorials, once again, is here.

BYU offer similar tutorials in other languages; you can find the links for these here.