Reading handwriting can be difficult at the best of times. I often find myself puzzling over helpful notes I’ve left for myself, with no idea what on earth I’d scrawled. And that’s my own, recent writing. I mean yes, I can write perfectly neatly and legibly – but quick notes are an entirely different beast.
Trying to decipher someone else’s writing can be even more of a challenge.
Trying to decipher handwriting from previous centuries even more so.
I recently saw a jokey post about something which sent me on a journey.
I would probably have passed over this without a second thought, except that Leeds is local, and I do like books. Oddly, it’s only now when I come to post this, that I realise the original post misspelled Leeds as Leads! Comments on the post criticised the use of an AI image. It hadn’t actually struck me as AI generated – it’s clearly fake though. A complete anachronism.
Off I went to Google to find out more.
A post from Leeds University themselves is delightfully entitled Curd Your Enthusiasm, and corrects much of the original article I read. The book is believed to be from the 1580s, which isn’t a time period I’d describe as “ancient”, but it’s a fairly relative term. It’s held in the university’s special library collections, but was transcribed by Tudor reenactors at Kentwell Hall.
And, obviously, looks VERY different to the mock-up image I first saw on social media.
It’s handwritten, for a start.
The title (subtitle?) shown here, states:
A pamflyt compiled of Cheese,
contayninge the differences,
nature, qualities, and
goodnes, of the same.
The spelling is delightful, and the handwriting is both pretty to look at, and pretty easy to read. I’m also amused to note the use of the Oxford comma.
One feature of most modern books, particularly non-fiction ones, is the use of various different typefaces for different purposes or features. The main text might be a fairly generic font, with pull quotes in a larger, bolder one. Additional information or definitions might appear in a box with yet another typeface. Italicised text might appear quite differently. Titles and subtitles are often in another typeface.
I created these examples to show three different ways to write a lowercase G, and two different As. We barely register these as different, now, because we’re so used to seeing them.
There is very little difference between the letters we are used to seeing today, and the pamflyt title pictured above. The main difference is the S in the words Cheese and same – stretched out so it’s more reminiscent of an F – unlike the S used at the end of words, as seen in differences, qualities, and goodnes, above.
But. This is a title. The script used here is different to the main body text. The main body uses a script with significantly more differences, and is much harder to decipher.
Recall the familiar “Cheese” in the title. This text here also contains the word cheese. Not as easy to spot, is it? This snippet above says “that cheese is milke” – the script is so different!
This one says “his is gathered only of cowe milke.”
“seperate those partes the one from the other. And so of the unctyous parte of milke called creame doth gather butter, and of the thicker parte called curdes maketh cheese, and the watery parte lefte they call whey.”
It’s a very detailed document, including many references to other work – notably Galen and Aristotle. Whenever the author quotes from elsewhere (or writes a Latin phrase), they use the same script used in the title, so those sections stand out and are much easier to read.
I enjoyed the challenge of deciphering this script. It’s sufficiently different to feel like a challenge, but also simple and clear enough (and written in the same English I’m used to reading) that I make rapid progress.
Plus, now I know that yewes milke hath in hit more cheesye matter.
You can view images from the book at Leeds University’s Digital Library.
If you, like me, enjoy the challenge of deciphering handwriting, you might like to contribute to one of several projects on Zooniverse.
Zooniverse is a platform which crowdsources a range of different research tasks. There are projects involving transcription of old documents, reviewing photographs and videos for evidence of wildlife, analysing medical imagery, all sorts. Previously, we’ve transcribed letters, criminal records, and labels on entomological and botanical specimens. We’ve reviewed underwater photographs for beluga whales, spotted immune cells in kidneys, identified bird species in field photographs, trees in satellite imagery – all sorts.
Yes, some of them are clearly there to train AI models to assist with such analysis and identification tasks in the future. But it’s nice to get involved with research projects, see what people are working on, and how you can contribute.