"What Does That Say?"
When conducting archival research in Special Collections, you're likely to come across handwritten materials. Those materials, more often than not, are written in script or cursive. Different hands—the handwritten version of fonts—can present differing levels of difficulty for the contemporary reader, depending on one's own familiarity with cursive writing. By tracing the development of various hands, including their instruction, researchers can better understand the documents they encounter.
Page 210 of The Universal Penman by George Bickham.
The universal penman, / engraved by George Bickham, London, 1743, Mortimer Rare Book Collection, Oversize Z43 .B58 1743a, Smith College Special Collections, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Guide to the Guide
This guide is intended to provide researchers with the resources necessary to improve their reading and, should they wish, writing of script. Understanding the strokes and shapes of different hands can make it easier to read difficult documents.
How to Use the Guide
Each section, separated by century, provides both a handwriting manual as well as real-world examples from Special Collections. The example documents span all three repositories: the Mortimer Rare Book Collection, Smith College Archives, and the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History.
Looking over, tracing, or practicing handwriting manuals can help in the reading of documents from the same period. To get the most out of this guide, consider printing out pages from the manuals and doing the exercises before tackling the example documents.
This Research Guide was created and written by Amelia Dolbeare in the Spring of 2024 as part of her role as a Special Collections Reference Assistant.
All of the images used within this LibGuide were photographed by Amelia Dolbeare from various repositories within Smith College Special Collections.