MUW workshop helps modern Americans decipher the script of their ancestors

MUW CAMPUS, COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Before typing emails, using 160 characters, or talk-to-text, people wrote with pens and pencils, on paper, and often in cursive.

And while it looks impressive on the page, even artisitc, soemtimes it can be hard to read for modern eyes.

It also poses a challenge for researchers, especially those used to reading print or screens.

Dr. Anne Crafton, an Assistant Professor of English Linguistics and Early Literature at Mississippi University for Women.

Crafton recently presented a workshop on Paleography, the study of hand writing and reading the handwriting of early Americans from the around the 1700s to the early 1900s.

She says once you can decipher the differences in writings it can open a new window into the past.

“Once you’ve kind of gained access and unlocked these kind of difficult letters, all of a sudden you’re able to read all of these amazing documents from 1807, you know 1900, all the way up to your own genealogical record. And, really it just takes a little bit of time and, allof a sudden, this world unlocks.”

Participants in the workshop were able to submit transcriptions for possible inclusion in a Library of Congress digitization project.