How to Read Handwriting in Old Canadian Records

One of the first real obstacles most researchers hit isn't finding a record, it's reading it once they have it. Handwriting styles have shifted enormously over the past two centuries, and a perfectly legible document to the clerk who wrote it can look like an entirely different alphabet today.

Start by learning the shapes, not the words. Older handwriting styles, particularly “copperplate” and other formal scripts common through the 1800s, used consistent letterforms that look unfamiliar today but follow predictable rules. The long s (ſ), which looks like a lowercase f, is one of the most common points of confusion; it typically appears at the start or middle of a word, never at the end. The long s largely disappeared from English handwriting by the early nineteenth century, although you'll still encounter it in older printed books and some earlier manuscript records. Capital letters, especially J, I, T, and F, are frequent sources of misreading, since many historical scripts render them in ways that look similar to modern eyes.

Use the rest of the document as your dictionary. Clerks were creatures of habit, and a single record often reuses the same handful of words repeatedly, “born,” “married,” “father,” “occupation,” and so on. Once you've confidently identified how a clerk writes a particular letter or word elsewhere in the document, you can use that as a reference point for the harder-to-read sections.

Watch for abbreviations. Many historical records shorten common terms: “do” or a ditto mark for “the same as above,” “abt” for “about,” “wid” for “widow” or “widower,” and a range of Latin abbreviations in church records, such as “b.” for baptizatus (baptized) or “sep.” for sepultus (buried).

Slow down on numbers. Handwritten numerals from this era can be easy to misread, a 1 and a 7 are often confused, as are a 3 and a 5, depending on the writer's style.

Try reading it out loud and try reading it upside down. Both sound strange, but both work. Speaking a half-legible word aloud sometimes triggers recognition your eyes alone won't catch, and flipping a stubborn word upside down can sometimes reveal a letterform your brain has been “correcting” incorrectly.

Finally, be patient with yourself. Even professional archivists spend time squinting at difficult passages, and a record that seems indecipherable on the first pass often opens up after a second or third look, once you've built a little familiarity with the handwriting in front of you.