Transcription Friday

Every Friday I have been working with some amazing individuals to develop skills needed to transcribe letters. Our Zoom meetings allow us to work together to decipher deeds, correspondence, and other documents. These Fridays have quickly become the highlights of my week. More often than not I have tried to go at it alone and this has taken me far out of my comfort zone. Going at it alone at the beginning is a mistake. I quickly learned that when I get stuck and frustrated by running into a word I just can’t figure out talking it over with someone somehow allows the word or letter to come into focus.. It helps see things from a different perspective.

Allow me to share some of my struggles with you. As it shines light on some of my successes as well.

All below photos are from the same letter. Jane and William Yardley to James Harrison June 29, 1682.

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E's and O's

Perhaps the first confusing bit I ran into when transcribing is the difference between e’s and o’s. These letters so often look alike. Often the context clues are helpful in figuring out which letter you are dealing with. Above is a picture of several e's. transcribed it reads "we are". The e's tend to lift their loops higher and to the right.

O's however, tend to not loop as much. Looking to the right we see an example of o's as it reads "I know not how". Here we see that the o's do are straight and like a standard O. For a long time I found myself confusing these two letters. What helped me the most was writing out the words on paper instead of transcribing straight to the computer. I found that the motion of my hand when I write E's matched the letters appearance. Sometimes it's the strangest things that allow you make the connections.

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S's

What I have learned is that S's come in many shapes and sizes. Even within the same document (or in this case the same letter) an S can have several shapes.

The Capital S is perhaps the easiest to identify. As one can see from the photo on the left. The calligraphy Capital S seems to be standard when at least among the many letters I have spent time on.

A bit trickier to identify is the other 'hidden' S in the word above. The word you are actually looking at is Sister. That long drawn out S int eh middle I would often confuse with a cursive lowercase f. This word was a complete struggle for me as the loopy E was also in here and we haven't even begun to discuss R's yet.

The S on the right is what I have nicknamed the fancy S. For no reason you can find these fancy S's throughout a letter even when it seems uncalled for or out of place. It isn't capital (which for a while I thought was why it was shaped this way) but it does stand out.

Although there are several ways you can see an S it is by far not the trickiest letters I have come across.

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R's and C's

These three letters gave me such a hard time. The good things is once you spot them over time your mind adjusts and they eventually become second nature.

R's drove me crazy. To me they were V's and you could not convince me otherwise for the longest time. Here you see 'more at large' and even though I know those are R's I often find myself second guessing. I wish I could give you a good tip or trick to remembering but I can't. IF you come up with one please leave in the comments because this gets me at least once a letter.

I am not proud of how long it took me to see the word tomorrow here. the double are is just twice as hard. At least it was for me.

By adding the picture to the left I'm 100% trying to confuse you. No, that is not a R. This is what the majority of C's look like when transcribing. Breaking it down for you like this gives you just a small incite into all the struggles I kept coming across.

This word incorporates several of the problem areas all wrapped into one word that even looking at how gives me a massive headache. Breaking it down letter by letter really helped me work this one out. It begins with a B which is quite clear (often that is the most helpful part is deciding right out what the easiest letters are). Next we see that there is a loop at the top as the letter isn't connected so that makes that letter an E as we learned earlier. Next, we have a letter that immediately makes you think it's an R and therefore is a clear indication that it's a C. We follow it up with an easy to read a and u. Penultimately we run across what can either be an f or an s. Using context we can assume it's an s. Finally we have another loopy letter which indicates it's probably and e.

So we have B-E-C-A-U-S-E. Such a simple word and yet strangely difficult.

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I recently came across a word that had me stumped due to one letter. That letter was repeated in several places so I'm going to leave them below and see if you can figure it out.

Here are 3 examples of the same letter in three different words. GOOD LUCK!

Let me know what you think it is in the comments!

Answers in the next blog!