The National Archive Needs Your Help Reading Cursive Documents

Old Letters, Manuscripts, More

Can you read cursive? I remember learning it in elementary school. I was never that good at it. My writing tends to be a cross between print and cursive.

But now, the National Archive is looking for people who can read cursive, as this skill has become more difficult to come by.

Those records range from Revolutionary War pension records to the field notes of Charles Mason of the Mason-Dixon Line to immigration documents from the 1890s to Japanese evacuation records to the 1950 Census.

“We create missions where we ask volunteers to help us transcribe or tag records in our catalog,” Isaacs said.

To volunteer, all that’s required is to sign up online and then launch in. “There’s no application,” she said. “You just pick a record that hasn’t been done and read the instructions. It’s easy to do for a half hour a day or a week.”

Or a few million. More than 200 years worth of U.S. documents need transcribing (or at least classifying) and the vast majority from the Revolutionary War era are handwritten in cursive — requiring people who know the flowing, looped form of penmanship.

What an amazing opportunity!