Reading old handwriting

Family history often leads to an old will, a letter or a page from a register.

The writing can look impossible to read at first. It gets much easier with practice and a few good habits.

These notes cover documents written in English between 1500 and 1800. They follow the guidance in The National Archives' palaeography tutorial. Palaeography is the study of old handwriting.

Go letter by letter

Most of us read modern text by taking in whole words at a glance. With an old hand, that habit leads to mistakes. Be ready to work through a document one letter at a time.

If you cannot make out a letter, leave a gap or put your best guess with a question mark. Read on for a few lines and then come back. The same letter often turns up somewhere else in a clearer form.

Know what kind of document it is

Many documents use standard phrases. A will usually names the person, where they lived, the executor, the witnesses and the main beneficiaries. Once you know the phrases to expect, you can read them easily and use them to work out the words around them.

Until 12 January 1858, all wills had to be proved by church and other courts. The wills of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, held at The National Archives, are copies written into registers by the court's clerks.

Spelling and letter shapes

English spelling was not standardised until the 18th century. A writer might spell the same word in different ways in one document. Saying a word out loud often helps.

A y can stand for an i, so myne is mine.
I and j were used for each other, and so were u and v.
A long s looks like an f. The f has a cross stroke, however faint.
Letters like i, n, u and m are made of short downstrokes called minims. Counting the strokes helps you work out the word.

Abbreviations

Writers shortened words to save time and space. A dash or wavy line over a vowel usually means a missing m or n. Small raised letters are common, so wt means with and wch means which.

The word that looks like ye is the. The first letter is an old letter called a thorn, which stood for th. When you copy a document, keep the original spelling. Put any letters you add when expanding a short form in square brackets.

Dates

Before 1752, the year in England officially began on 25 March. So a document dated between 1 January and 24 March needs a year added in modern terms. You may see this written as January 1750/51.

In 1752, Wednesday 2 September was followed by Thursday 14 September. Scotland had started its year on 1 January from 1600. Some documents give the year of the monarch's reign instead of a calendar year.

Numbers and money

Arabic numbers came into use in England in the 16th century, and Roman numerals carried on alongside them. They were often written in lower case, with a j for a final 1, so iiij is 4. People also counted in scores of 20.

Money was in pounds, shillings and pence. There were 20 shillings in a pound and 12 pence in a shilling. A mark was an amount rather than a coin, worth 13s 4d.