The National Archives needs the help of people with the special skill of reading cursive. The Archives Department is seeking volunteer citizen archivists to help sort and transcribe more than 200 years worth of handwritten historical documents. Most of these date from the Revolutionary War era and are known for their looped, flowing handwriting.
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“Reading cursive is a superpower,” says Suzanne Isaacs, community manager for the National Archives Catalog said USA Today. “It’s not just about whether you learned cursive in school, it’s about how much you use it today.”
Isaacs coordinates more than 5,000 citizen archivists who help read and transcribe some of the more than 300 million digitized objects in the catalog. Volunteers can help with everything from pension records. Field notes written by a geographer Immigration on the Mason-Dixon Line census records.
Interested volunteers can Sign up onlineno application is required. Reading the handwritten script is helpful, but not required for some records. Pension records during the Revolutionary War There is a “cursive-free option” that allows volunteers to tag what has already been transcribed to make it easier to find.
Cursive writing was once the norm in classrooms across the country, and calligraphy was graded. It started to disappear once typewriters became popular and then computers became popular. Common Core Educational Standards But no matter how little cursive is used in everyday life, 14 states still require it to be taught in schools.
In 2023, California passed the following law: Students from 1st to 6th grade need to be taught “cursive or combined italics.”. The main reason behind this law is to read primary source historical documents such as those found in the National Archives. There is also some evidence that learning cursive is beneficial for the brain.
“A growing body of neuroscience research shows that writing out letters in cursive, especially compared to typewriting, activates specific neural pathways, promoting and optimizing overall learning and language development. “We support the idea that it can be done,” says neuroscientist Claudia Aguirre. told the BBC After the California law was passed.
Studies comparing handwriting something to typing it out show that it remains Writing with paper and pen is most effective. However, the biggest benefits for both memory and learning new words involve writing rather than using cursive over print.
[ Related: Why writing by hand is better for remembering things.]
According to the National ArchivesArtificial intelligence (AI) is getting better at reading cursive, but it still needs human help. they have cooperated family searchis an AI genealogy nonprofit operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to search and access historical documents. Because of the high number of errors, final human editing of the document is still required. AI may have issues with tears, tears, smudges, crosses, ink smearing from the paper, old-fashioned lettering, creative spelling, and more.
For those looking to practice or learn cursive skills, Southwestern Illinois University has list of resources.
