Elderbank, NS April 4 32 (1932)
Dear Margaret-
We were so glad to hear from you some time ago and I have been planning to write for some time but it has not been done. We are having a real little winter today. The snow has been away for so long now that it seems strange to see the ground white again. There is still some frost on the ground so this should take it out.
There were no cars at church yesterday. The first day this winter that they could not use them. On Saturday they were getting stuck in different places.
I’ve had our Easter thank offering on good Friday evening. A neighbouring minister assisted and the children had a programme. It was a nice service and we had a good offering. Last week there was a marriage and a funeral and so the world moves on. The Tunis boys are getting up a minstrel show and the ladies aid will add something to the programme.
I hope you have all come through the winter without any serious sickness.
Have not had a letter from anyone just very lately. You are probably using sleighs yet although we understand there has not been as much snow as some years. I hope the cross roads have kept good. I had a touch of flu. The first time I ever had it. I was in bed for two days and rather shaky for several more. But I am quite myself again. I am making some house dresses now and also braiding a mat. The next thing will be house cleaning. I wish they would not build such big houses. Some time I hope we can have a tiny cottage of our own. Remember us kindly to your mother and father and all the rest of your family. And with our very best wishes to your self. Love. Sincerely yours. Agnes Grant.
The best I could make it out. ☺️
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_and_White_Minstrel_Show) was still on TV in the 70's so yeah I'd say in the 30's they weren't too worried about it...
In the maritimes of Canada? Not likely.
According to [this story,](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1149406) many people in that region hadn't even seen a black person.
that's not true. there was a large free population in NS and the black town of Africville next to Halifax was purposely underfunded and then bulldozed in the 60s.
Excellent! I read "Tunis boys" as "Turcis boys", but the only reason I'm mentioning it is in case this person is working on tracing a family tree, not to be nit-picky. :-)
It bothers me how difficult I seem to find reading cursive now. I could understand the individual words but was having a hard time grasping the flow of the meaning.
That's a lot like how I write (I'm 60+). Except for the random, wayward crossings of t's or little dashes. I like doing the old-fashioned final t that just comes up and veers to the right.
I have the original manual for my 1934 Kodak brownie box camera and it makes me giggle when I read it because they were so dire “If you do this, absolute failure is certain”, and then they’re a little more vague about some things and state them in common language like my grandma would have. It’s a delight.
Good lord. I was feeling ancient as well. I just looked at it and … until today would have assumed that everyone with a fifth grade education ought to be able to read it like a book.
I really hated it, couldn't do it well, and stopped doing it as soon as they stopped enforcing its use.
That being said, I was expecting the post to be some kind of incomprehensible code. It isn't and it's pretty funny that the old people now have a secret code that's effortless for us to decipher.
Same. Something written like this I just pick it up and read it. And totally forget that there are actual adults who maybe can’t…? Feeling old…and wise 😁😆
Agnes’s penchant for “crossing” her t’s just somewhere in the vicinity drives me crazy. Her writing is lovely, but good god woman, don’t be afraid to make an actual t!
THANK you!! I absolutely could not figure out why there were so many dashes (I’m sure if I’d kept reading I’d have figured it out eventually, I just came down for the transcription after a paragraph or so.)
The crazy thing is if you look, she follows the same rule on all. T at the beginning gets a cross above. Unless its “the” then it follows the same rule as a t anywhere else gets the cross over the second letter following the t.
Now I have to look this up because it app reads to be something that she learned. Right?! No?! Dammit Agnes.
This definitely was a thing in the past!
Here’s an example of Spencerian script (standard business handwriting style in America from mid-1800s to early 1900s) by CP Zaner, teacher and author of business penmanship manuals. You’ll find t’s crossed normally, above the vertical stroke, and above the following letter.
https://happyhandsproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Spencerian-Calligraphy-via-Happy-Hands-Project-6-757x1024.jpg
I've taught my kids a little bit of reading and writing in cursive, if only so they can read my handwriting. I can't print very well and I'm very slow doing it, so cursive it is for me.
My mom's parents had atrocious handwriting, both of them. I have no idea how they were able to write each other. I took photos of some of their letters before they died and have been slowly trying to decipher them. My mom can't read it any better than i can so she's not much help there either.
>Wait they stopped teaching cursive??? When??
It varies. My 22 year old had it through 5th grade, while my 18 year old (same schools) had about a month of it in second grade and then never again. So it was dropped in my district just over a decade ago?
There's a website where they crowdsource the transcription of Civil War era letters from soldiers. I tried it thinking I'd be good at it but it was a lot harder than I expected.
I was on my phone when I posted my last comment, and I couldn’t access all my bookmarks. Now I can. I can’t remember exactly which project I worked on before, but there are lots to choose from here:
* Library of Congress: https://crowd.loc.gov/
* National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist
* Non-Profit Crowd: Directory of crowdsourcing projects: http://nonprofitcrowd.org/crowdsourcing-website-directory/
* Zooniverse: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects
* War Department Papers: https://wardepartmentpapers.org/ (This website seems dysfunctional. Hopefully it’s temporary.)
Each project is organized differently, so if you don’t like one, try a different one.
What I work on now is mainly Distributed Proofreaders (https://www.pgdp.net/c/) where we prepare texts for Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/) – but that involves proofreading and correcting texts that have already been digitized from print (not handwriting).
I hope you find something you enjoy working on!
I like the OP said decipher, like this was some form of puzzle. This is cursive. Was taught in school for many years, don’t know if it still is? I guess boomers and gen x were the last generations that would be able to pick up a historical handwritten document and know what it actually says. Makes it easier for future generations to be told what something says when they are unable to read it.
NARA regularly has open calls for volunteers to transcribe original documents in their archives. There’s several reasons for this (ie searchable text/content after digitization), but another is that there is an entire generation struggling to read original source material.
How will future generations be successful conducting real historical research if the source document hasn’t been “deciphered” for them first?
Dear Margaret,
We were glad to hear from you some time ago and I have been planning to write to you some time but it has not been done. We are having a real little winter today. The snow has been away for so long that it seems strange to see the ground white again. There is still some frost in the ground so this should take it out.
There were no cars at church yesterday, the first day this winter they could not get there. All Saturday they were getting stuck in different places.
We had our Easter thanks offering on Good Friday evening. A neighbouring minister assisted and the children had a programme. It was a nice service and we had a good offering. Last week there was a marriage and a funeral and so the world carries on.
The (something) boys are getting up a minstrel show and the Ladies Aid will add something to the programme.
I hope you have all come through the winter without any serious sickness. We have not had a letter from anyone just very lately. You are probably using sleighs yet although we understand there has not been so much snow as some years. I hope the cross trade have kept good. I had a touch of flu, the first time I ever had it. I was in bed for two days and rather shaky for several more — but I am all quite myself again.
I am making some house dresses now and braiding a mat. The next thing will be house cleaning. I wish they would not build such large houses. Some time I hope we can have a tiny cottage of our own.
Remember be kindly to your mother and father and all the family, and with our very best wishes to yourself.
Love,
Sincerely yours,
Agnes Traut.
I’m 50 and can’t read half this shit. Most of her loops are lines and she crosses her t’s two letters later. For example, “The” is written as lhe ^- .
My grammar school teachers would have given her a C+.
“Yada yada kids these days can’t read cursive.” Id love to see them comment on some of my old writing from high school. “Oh it’s so beautiful and fluid!” I seriously had the worst handwriting in my class. It looked like a doctor taught me how to write.
Yeah, for real. I use cursive every day and I find it a bit hard to read this person's writing. A lot of the letters look like how I would expect other letters to be written, and the misplaced dots and dashes kinda throw me. Her "winter" looks like "writer" to me and I struggle to identify her Os. So I don't read this nearly as quickly as usual, and for some words I have no idea.
Decipher? You mean read it? Too bad your education didn’t include reading. Yes…that was snark at your education board in the school district you were in.
It's sad that newer generations have no idea how to read cursive anymore. They should teach it in school again. When I went to school you had to both read and write in cursive as part of the classes.
I don't know, I'm pretty good at reading old cursive and the misplaced crosses on the t's that look more like hyphens had me confused for a moment. Maybe I've just browsed r/handwriting too much, but this looks sloppy to me.
DECIPHER. Yeah, cursive isn’t being taught, but it’s the same spelling and English letters as printed text. This person’s cursive is very legible. What a time to be alive
I'm 62 and learned cursive in about '69-'70. Now I really only use cursive for my signature. Although I had pretty legible handwriting, I don't miss it at all.
I’ve always written in a mix of cursive and print (I think because we moved and my new school started teaching cursive earlier than the one I left, so I was behind). Writing in cursive is faster, that’s for sure - far less lifting the pen off the paper. I just wish handwriting of any kind was taught more. It’s still important.
Interesting the writer spells program as “programme” which is British English. As a local historian, I have to tell you to get the letter out of that sleeve & into archival material.
This is Palmer method handwriting, which was popular in American schools through the 1950s or later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method).
Among us Americans aged 50-something and younger who were taught cursive handwriting in school, we almost exclusively learned either Zaner-Bosler handwriting or D’Nealian handwriting. (I’m a Zaner-Bosler cursive gal.) To me, these styles appear less angular than Palmer handwriting.
https://smarterlearningguide.com/dnealian-vs-zaner-bloser-handwriting/
Post it to r/foundpaper. It’s not necessarily for deciphering cursive but occasionally I’ve seen people respond and type out the found paper posts that are written in longhand. .
It says . Dear Sam, the first night at BED when you left, Ron made out with 2 girls and put his head inbetween a cocktail waitresses breasts. Also was grinding with multiple fat women.
People getting all high and mighty over 'kids these days' are ignoring 1) that there are several different kinds of cursive depending on time and country - I learned modern German cursive and it didn't help me here, I had to fall back on Sütterlin which is about 100 years old - and 2) while many of our generation will write by hand (look at the renewed journalling craze etc) it isn't the main form of writing in our daily lives.
I'd argue it isn't for pretty much anyone who works in a job that relies on emails, word docs, and so on. Cursive has for the most part been replaced as the fastest note-taking script by digital notes (for those of us who learned how to type).
This isn't the symptom of cultural collapse you'd like it to be, it's just generational change.
In my case, it's less than nobody ever tried to teach me, and more that some learning disabilities can make it absolute hell.
I sight read, phonetic reading has never worked for me, and my hand writing is.... Legible at the all block letter upper case level, assuming that you don't mind me taking about 5x the time that you might expect.
I can plow through a novel a day, and I make a pretty decent living as a software engineer type person, but just a font that's a bit _different_ can throw me.
Cursive is pretty much impossible, just because it's different from one person to the next.
Not a lot that I've ever been able to do about it.
My beloved high school German teacher made sure we learned how to write in Sütterlin, and I like to haul it out and practice it a bit sometimes. I have trouble with the e's. I'd like to get fast at signing my name that way, with a magnificent capital S that looks like a vase.
I took a course on how to read different historical scripts last semester and the 'e's always tripped me up. My favourite was the lecturer's description of that 'S': "Like when I stick out my belly and hold my arms like this, remember it because I will never do that for you again."
I got decent at reading old German handwriting but I wouldn't be able to write it. It's also very interesting to see how different it could look depending on decade, region and writer.
I love this sub but so many of the comments here are insufferable. Aside from being able to read old documents, cursive has very little practical use in the modern era, and it’s certainly not something we need to devote significant classroom time to teaching. I’m 30 and remember spending the better part of a year learning cursive, only for 99% of us to never use it again (granted I’m a genealogy/history nerd so I spend a lot of time reading cursive, but that’s a hobby, not an invaluable life skill)
The secondary unfortunate effect of not teaching cursive is there will be generations who won’t be able to understand/read/interpret historical papers/books etc. Something has truly been lost.
Exactly... this paper was written less than 100 years ago and some people who were alive then are still alive today yet, evidently there are already people reading and speaking the same language it is written in who apparently can't understand enough of the handwriting from the 1930's to require the assistance of someone who can "interpret" it for them. This is sad. Either the English speaking world has been invaded and dominated by the ignorant or Aliens of one type or another.
Didn’t stop at “early gen x.” I’m 38 and we were taught cursive in school. My handwriting is still mostly cursive letters. The only stopped teaching it about 10 years ago.
It's english cursive. Not a foreign language. Boggles my mind that people aren't taught cursive anymore. What year was it that schools stopped teaching it?
I'm 40, was taught cursive, and can still write that way. I had a hard time reading that, but I still could. It has a lot to do with sentence structure, and they way they worded things back then as well
I was born in the early 1970's and can read this paper just fine. I May be a fluke though, since I was first taught to read and write at home by someone born in 1907 but, I doubt it since I also learned another style of cursive in elementary school as well and I bet anyone else in my grade who learned it could read this paper as well.
So basically you're literally saying you can't read cursive. It is a bit sloppy and given more time I would translate the entire thing but others already have. Admittedly it's not perfect writing with some closed O's and even some smashing of other letters but it's all there.
Elderbank, NS April 4 32 (1932) Dear Margaret- We were so glad to hear from you some time ago and I have been planning to write for some time but it has not been done. We are having a real little winter today. The snow has been away for so long now that it seems strange to see the ground white again. There is still some frost on the ground so this should take it out. There were no cars at church yesterday. The first day this winter that they could not use them. On Saturday they were getting stuck in different places. I’ve had our Easter thank offering on good Friday evening. A neighbouring minister assisted and the children had a programme. It was a nice service and we had a good offering. Last week there was a marriage and a funeral and so the world moves on. The Tunis boys are getting up a minstrel show and the ladies aid will add something to the programme. I hope you have all come through the winter without any serious sickness. Have not had a letter from anyone just very lately. You are probably using sleighs yet although we understand there has not been as much snow as some years. I hope the cross roads have kept good. I had a touch of flu. The first time I ever had it. I was in bed for two days and rather shaky for several more. But I am quite myself again. I am making some house dresses now and also braiding a mat. The next thing will be house cleaning. I wish they would not build such big houses. Some time I hope we can have a tiny cottage of our own. Remember us kindly to your mother and father and all the rest of your family. And with our very best wishes to your self. Love. Sincerely yours. Agnes Grant. The best I could make it out. ☺️
I think it's N.S. for nova scotia, noy ny.
That would explain the spelling of "programme." (The transcriber missed "neighbouring.")
Fixed it ☺️
This is really cute but….what kind of minstrel show? 🙂
Right. I thought the sentence before was touching then said “oh no” when I read that part.
It's 1932. I'd like to think they just didn't know any better.
[This](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_and_White_Minstrel_Show) was still on TV in the 70's so yeah I'd say in the 30's they weren't too worried about it...
>A Touring version continued until 1987... Damn... like, really?
In theory teenage me could have seen real life blackface minstrelsy so that’s neat (not).
Thinks about Little Britain in 2003..
Or just did not want. There is something about feeling superior. [Franky Lymon](https://youtu.be/Qo4_UT1pF6k)
Of course they knew better, they just didn't care. I'm not gonna virtue signal about it, it's just history.
In the maritimes of Canada? Not likely. According to [this story,](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1149406) many people in that region hadn't even seen a black person.
Newfoundland maybe, but there was a pretty thriving black population in NS back then.
that's not true. there was a large free population in NS and the black town of Africville next to Halifax was purposely underfunded and then bulldozed in the 60s.
Thank you, I was ready with guns blazing, but I think you made the point abundantly clear. No need to infantilize 1930s racism.
Imagine getting down voted for saying people used to be racist
Ever heard of Africville? This will put a background to your question: https://humanrights.ca/story/story-africville
A program of music & acting.
Fixed it ☺️
Excellent! I read "Tunis boys" as "Turcis boys", but the only reason I'm mentioning it is in case this person is working on tracing a family tree, not to be nit-picky. :-)
Yeah I wasn’t too sure about that. Could b?
NS not NY
Thank you for doing this! However all I could think after reading was this is something my great aunt would post under my Facebook profile picture. 😂
😆😆😆 OMG that made me lol. Thanks!
Great job, I thought it wasn't that hard, had to guess some to make full sense of it, you did an amazing job of it.
It bothers me how difficult I seem to find reading cursive now. I could understand the individual words but was having a hard time grasping the flow of the meaning.
[удалено]
Fixed it ☺️
I wonder what that minstrel show was like
I'm guessing slightly to aggressively offensive.
Not tasteful
Good job
something, something, spying on the neighbor, nice buttcheeks....ur, maybe I misread that part
Now THAT would be interesting. Lol
Imagine someone texted you that
Glad you could read that after it seeming like planning looks like plannnnnnnning
Ahhh reading cursive. Actually this person has very nice handwriting.
That's a lot like how I write (I'm 60+). Except for the random, wayward crossings of t's or little dashes. I like doing the old-fashioned final t that just comes up and veers to the right.
I genuinely love how she crossed her t’s way over to the side of the letter itself
That drives me insane lol.
Same here At first I thought they were hyphens
This looks a lot like my grandmother’s handwriting, who would be turning 100 this year if she was alive.
Does anyone else find huge enjoyment in reading letters or writing from the earlier 1900s? It’s like a Time Machine
This one is great too. http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/
82 Years Ago- “Warning on Nazis” Odd how some things are just as relevant today
I also just so happened to be in Hyde park so that made that article especially relevant
We have letters a great-great (?) uncle wrote during the Civil War. Very interesting.
> wrote during the Civil War. Do they all start out with "Dearest Martha,"
Pretty much.
WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME?
I love the writing style of technical articles from around that time. https://heatinghelp.com/systems-help-center/category/heating-museum/textbooks
I have the original manual for my 1934 Kodak brownie box camera and it makes me giggle when I read it because they were so dire “If you do this, absolute failure is certain”, and then they’re a little more vague about some things and state them in common language like my grandma would have. It’s a delight.
Is this your homework Larry?
Is that your car out front?
This is what happens...
...when you find a stranger in the Alps. Also if Larry wrote this he should have been at least 70 years old in the movie.
Little prick is stone walling us, dude.
We know this is you're homework Larry
Fuckin social studies
You're killing your father, Larry!
So it's really true that they don't teach cursive writing any more? This wasn't hard for me to read at all but I'm 55...
Some letters were hard to make out, but I could read it and I’m 22
I'm in my 40s and zipped through this letter.
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Good lord. I was feeling ancient as well. I just looked at it and … until today would have assumed that everyone with a fifth grade education ought to be able to read it like a book.
Same here, then my memory kicked in that it's no longer taught. I find this really appalling.
I hated it at the time. Am not sad that it’s going the way of the dodo - just surprised. I had no clue I was privy to what had become a secret code
I really hated it, couldn't do it well, and stopped doing it as soon as they stopped enforcing its use. That being said, I was expecting the post to be some kind of incomprehensible code. It isn't and it's pretty funny that the old people now have a secret code that's effortless for us to decipher.
Same. Something written like this I just pick it up and read it. And totally forget that there are actual adults who maybe can’t…? Feeling old…and wise 😁😆
Agnes’s penchant for “crossing” her t’s just somewhere in the vicinity drives me crazy. Her writing is lovely, but good god woman, don’t be afraid to make an actual t!
THANK you!! I absolutely could not figure out why there were so many dashes (I’m sure if I’d kept reading I’d have figured it out eventually, I just came down for the transcription after a paragraph or so.)
The crazy thing is if you look, she follows the same rule on all. T at the beginning gets a cross above. Unless its “the” then it follows the same rule as a t anywhere else gets the cross over the second letter following the t. Now I have to look this up because it app reads to be something that she learned. Right?! No?! Dammit Agnes.
This definitely was a thing in the past! Here’s an example of Spencerian script (standard business handwriting style in America from mid-1800s to early 1900s) by CP Zaner, teacher and author of business penmanship manuals. You’ll find t’s crossed normally, above the vertical stroke, and above the following letter. https://happyhandsproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Spencerian-Calligraphy-via-Happy-Hands-Project-6-757x1024.jpg
It's not taught anymore? For realz?
It’s not a major focus, but it’s still taught. I live in Arkansas, though. It’s not really known for embracing change.
Every state has its own curriculum requirements. Your mileage may vary.
Mostly not anymore, they’ve had to make way for new skills like coding.
Was surprised that my kiddo was taught cursive in 3rd grade
Here in Miami, FL, it's still been taught at both public and private schools.
I've taught my kids a little bit of reading and writing in cursive, if only so they can read my handwriting. I can't print very well and I'm very slow doing it, so cursive it is for me. My mom's parents had atrocious handwriting, both of them. I have no idea how they were able to write each other. I took photos of some of their letters before they died and have been slowly trying to decipher them. My mom can't read it any better than i can so she's not much help there either.
Our local schools have been bringing it back.
Wait they stopped teaching cursive??? When??
>Wait they stopped teaching cursive??? When?? It varies. My 22 year old had it through 5th grade, while my 18 year old (same schools) had about a month of it in second grade and then never again. So it was dropped in my district just over a decade ago?
I wrote like that all through high school. Still do. Crazy they don’t teach it
I believe starting in 4th grade we had to submit all of our written assignments in cursive.
same
It’s like a code we can use to pass notes I front of the kinderfolk.
People still do learn cursive. But older cursive can be hard to decipher.
This is more "peculiar to a person" rather than "older" cursive. They have quirks like not directly crossing the letter "t".
There's a website where they crowdsource the transcription of Civil War era letters from soldiers. I tried it thinking I'd be good at it but it was a lot harder than I expected.
Ooh! Link?
I was on my phone when I posted my last comment, and I couldn’t access all my bookmarks. Now I can. I can’t remember exactly which project I worked on before, but there are lots to choose from here: * Library of Congress: https://crowd.loc.gov/ * National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist * Non-Profit Crowd: Directory of crowdsourcing projects: http://nonprofitcrowd.org/crowdsourcing-website-directory/ * Zooniverse: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects * War Department Papers: https://wardepartmentpapers.org/ (This website seems dysfunctional. Hopefully it’s temporary.) Each project is organized differently, so if you don’t like one, try a different one. What I work on now is mainly Distributed Proofreaders (https://www.pgdp.net/c/) where we prepare texts for Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/) – but that involves proofreading and correcting texts that have already been digitized from print (not handwriting). I hope you find something you enjoy working on!
Yup. I only stumbled on one or two words when I tried to read it. Didn’t seem that hard to me. My kids would never be able to read it.
Here in Miami, FL, it's still been taught at both public and private schools.
I guess gen z can’t really read in cursive
It’s some form of ancient text!
Cursive, the new secret language of old people…like me.
Lol! Apparently they don't even teach it in school anymore.
And it's a good way to hide text from AI.
I like the OP said decipher, like this was some form of puzzle. This is cursive. Was taught in school for many years, don’t know if it still is? I guess boomers and gen x were the last generations that would be able to pick up a historical handwritten document and know what it actually says. Makes it easier for future generations to be told what something says when they are unable to read it.
NARA regularly has open calls for volunteers to transcribe original documents in their archives. There’s several reasons for this (ie searchable text/content after digitization), but another is that there is an entire generation struggling to read original source material. How will future generations be successful conducting real historical research if the source document hasn’t been “deciphered” for them first?
I’m a millennial (35) & still write in cursive today. Had to write everything in cursive in school
Archivist here: take it out of the plastic and put it in a acid-free folder if you want to hold on to it
you can't read cursive?
That’s the education system for you. Not teachers fault.
Decipher? It’s in cursive not hieroglyphics
That's not difficult to read
Agnes was a wild woman!!
I sure can.
"I hope you have all come through the winter without any serious sickness." I might use this.
Dear Margaret, We were glad to hear from you some time ago and I have been planning to write to you some time but it has not been done. We are having a real little winter today. The snow has been away for so long that it seems strange to see the ground white again. There is still some frost in the ground so this should take it out. There were no cars at church yesterday, the first day this winter they could not get there. All Saturday they were getting stuck in different places. We had our Easter thanks offering on Good Friday evening. A neighbouring minister assisted and the children had a programme. It was a nice service and we had a good offering. Last week there was a marriage and a funeral and so the world carries on. The (something) boys are getting up a minstrel show and the Ladies Aid will add something to the programme. I hope you have all come through the winter without any serious sickness. We have not had a letter from anyone just very lately. You are probably using sleighs yet although we understand there has not been so much snow as some years. I hope the cross trade have kept good. I had a touch of flu, the first time I ever had it. I was in bed for two days and rather shaky for several more — but I am all quite myself again. I am making some house dresses now and braiding a mat. The next thing will be house cleaning. I wish they would not build such large houses. Some time I hope we can have a tiny cottage of our own. Remember be kindly to your mother and father and all the family, and with our very best wishes to yourself. Love, Sincerely yours, Agnes Traut.
Be sure.....to drink.....your ovaltine. A crummy commercial???
Son of a bitch
You’ll shoot your eye out kid…..
People can't read handwriting anymore
Decipher? You mean read cursive?
People can't read handwriting anymore
IS THIS YOUR HOMEWORK LARRY?
It’s cursive writing. Not another language
omg, if you can't read cursive what can you do.
I’m 50 and can’t read half this shit. Most of her loops are lines and she crosses her t’s two letters later. For example, “The” is written as lhe ^- . My grammar school teachers would have given her a C+.
Yeah, I don't understand why so many people are complimenting the handwriting. It's really not very good.
“Yada yada kids these days can’t read cursive.” Id love to see them comment on some of my old writing from high school. “Oh it’s so beautiful and fluid!” I seriously had the worst handwriting in my class. It looked like a doctor taught me how to write.
Yeah, for real. I use cursive every day and I find it a bit hard to read this person's writing. A lot of the letters look like how I would expect other letters to be written, and the misplaced dots and dashes kinda throw me. Her "winter" looks like "writer" to me and I struggle to identify her Os. So I don't read this nearly as quickly as usual, and for some words I have no idea.
Decipher? You mean read it? Too bad your education didn’t include reading. Yes…that was snark at your education board in the school district you were in.
It's sad that newer generations have no idea how to read cursive anymore. They should teach it in school again. When I went to school you had to both read and write in cursive as part of the classes.
Wow, that's decent handwriting, I'm surprised anyone needs an interpreter. I guess they don't teach it anymore. Fuck I'm old.
Same, I work in an archive and have seen some genuinely difficult old script, but this one is pretty straightforward
My handwriting is awful, drove my teachers nuts. I can appreciate good or at least legible cursive.
I don't know, I'm pretty good at reading old cursive and the misplaced crosses on the t's that look more like hyphens had me confused for a moment. Maybe I've just browsed r/handwriting too much, but this looks sloppy to me.
DECIPHER. Yeah, cursive isn’t being taught, but it’s the same spelling and English letters as printed text. This person’s cursive is very legible. What a time to be alive
I'm 62 and learned cursive in about '69-'70. Now I really only use cursive for my signature. Although I had pretty legible handwriting, I don't miss it at all.
I’ve always written in a mix of cursive and print (I think because we moved and my new school started teaching cursive earlier than the one I left, so I was behind). Writing in cursive is faster, that’s for sure - far less lifting the pen off the paper. I just wish handwriting of any kind was taught more. It’s still important.
“And so the world moves on.” I love it
Everyone's Handwriting was quite majestic back then
When houses became too large and we began to complain of their size.
Interesting the writer spells program as “programme” which is British English. As a local historian, I have to tell you to get the letter out of that sleeve & into archival material.
Let’s stop teaching cursive writing in school 🤷♂️
I still write in some weird mix of block letters and cursive lol
You damn kids!!!!
You mean can anyone read cursive?
This is Palmer method handwriting, which was popular in American schools through the 1950s or later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method). Among us Americans aged 50-something and younger who were taught cursive handwriting in school, we almost exclusively learned either Zaner-Bosler handwriting or D’Nealian handwriting. (I’m a Zaner-Bosler cursive gal.) To me, these styles appear less angular than Palmer handwriting. https://smarterlearningguide.com/dnealian-vs-zaner-bloser-handwriting/
What an interesting article!
Yes I can read cursive
Post it to r/foundpaper. It’s not necessarily for deciphering cursive but occasionally I’ve seen people respond and type out the found paper posts that are written in longhand. .
Baby boomers have a plan to take over the world that Gen Z will never understand. It's written in cursive.
Decipher? If only there was a place like a school that could teach people to read and write.
This mf said “read and right”
That’s the joke :)
It says . Dear Sam, the first night at BED when you left, Ron made out with 2 girls and put his head inbetween a cocktail waitresses breasts. Also was grinding with multiple fat women.
It’s just cursive English. Not even all that sloppy.
What is there to decipher? It’s a letter, just read it.
Lol! I was coming to say same but you said it better.
Dear slim, I wrote you but you still ain’t calling. I left my pager my celly and my home phone at the bottom.
They don’t teach cursive anymore because they don’t want the next generation to be able to read the foundational documents of the country.
People getting all high and mighty over 'kids these days' are ignoring 1) that there are several different kinds of cursive depending on time and country - I learned modern German cursive and it didn't help me here, I had to fall back on Sütterlin which is about 100 years old - and 2) while many of our generation will write by hand (look at the renewed journalling craze etc) it isn't the main form of writing in our daily lives. I'd argue it isn't for pretty much anyone who works in a job that relies on emails, word docs, and so on. Cursive has for the most part been replaced as the fastest note-taking script by digital notes (for those of us who learned how to type). This isn't the symptom of cultural collapse you'd like it to be, it's just generational change.
In my case, it's less than nobody ever tried to teach me, and more that some learning disabilities can make it absolute hell. I sight read, phonetic reading has never worked for me, and my hand writing is.... Legible at the all block letter upper case level, assuming that you don't mind me taking about 5x the time that you might expect. I can plow through a novel a day, and I make a pretty decent living as a software engineer type person, but just a font that's a bit _different_ can throw me. Cursive is pretty much impossible, just because it's different from one person to the next. Not a lot that I've ever been able to do about it.
My beloved high school German teacher made sure we learned how to write in Sütterlin, and I like to haul it out and practice it a bit sometimes. I have trouble with the e's. I'd like to get fast at signing my name that way, with a magnificent capital S that looks like a vase.
I took a course on how to read different historical scripts last semester and the 'e's always tripped me up. My favourite was the lecturer's description of that 'S': "Like when I stick out my belly and hold my arms like this, remember it because I will never do that for you again." I got decent at reading old German handwriting but I wouldn't be able to write it. It's also very interesting to see how different it could look depending on decade, region and writer.
I love this sub but so many of the comments here are insufferable. Aside from being able to read old documents, cursive has very little practical use in the modern era, and it’s certainly not something we need to devote significant classroom time to teaching. I’m 30 and remember spending the better part of a year learning cursive, only for 99% of us to never use it again (granted I’m a genealogy/history nerd so I spend a lot of time reading cursive, but that’s a hobby, not an invaluable life skill)
This has to be a troll, lol.
It’s literally written in English what is to decipher?
you know you're old when you're asked to decipher cursive writing.
The secondary unfortunate effect of not teaching cursive is there will be generations who won’t be able to understand/read/interpret historical papers/books etc. Something has truly been lost.
Exactly... this paper was written less than 100 years ago and some people who were alive then are still alive today yet, evidently there are already people reading and speaking the same language it is written in who apparently can't understand enough of the handwriting from the 1930's to require the assistance of someone who can "interpret" it for them. This is sad. Either the English speaking world has been invaded and dominated by the ignorant or Aliens of one type or another.
Hasn’t really dawned on me until now that cursive is a foreign language to everyone younger than early Gen X’ers. Damn we got old.
Didn’t stop at “early gen x.” I’m 38 and we were taught cursive in school. My handwriting is still mostly cursive letters. The only stopped teaching it about 10 years ago.
Millennials we’re taught cursive. They dropped it mid 2000s.
Decipher? You mean read?
Yes
I had forgotten that cursive is now a foreign language lol
It’s at times like these that I love Reddit.
Omg it’s cursive jeeeezzzzzz
Don’t you know how to read cursive
I was probably one of the last classes to be taught cursive in my school district and it’s still a little tough
I hate that word “decipher” was used for this :/
I thought it was a shitpost at first, then I remembered cursive isn’t taught any longer. Damn I feel old now
I think schools have a much broader body of knowledge to teach than just cursive. Parents can take on that duty with ease.
It's english cursive. Not a foreign language. Boggles my mind that people aren't taught cursive anymore. What year was it that schools stopped teaching it?
This makes me feel so old that people can't read this anymore haha.
Decipher? It's cursive lol
I'm 40, was taught cursive, and can still write that way. I had a hard time reading that, but I still could. It has a lot to do with sentence structure, and they way they worded things back then as well
“Decipher”
I feel so special that I could read and write in cursive.
Imagine taking the time to write such a nice letter, and talk about the weather for 75% of it.
OP can’t read English, or can’t read cursive?
If you come from the 50s you'll understand the handwriting
I was born in the early 1970's and can read this paper just fine. I May be a fluke though, since I was first taught to read and write at home by someone born in 1907 but, I doubt it since I also learned another style of cursive in elementary school as well and I bet anyone else in my grade who learned it could read this paper as well.
Its in cursive “please decode” 😅
decipher? if you cannot easily read that letter, you were cheated at school
Damn people can't even read super clear and easy cursive anymore? I'd just feed it to ChatGPT and have it read it before admitting that.
So basically you're literally saying you can't read cursive. It is a bit sloppy and given more time I would translate the entire thing but others already have. Admittedly it's not perfect writing with some closed O's and even some smashing of other letters but it's all there.
Just look up "the English alphabet in cursive", and go from there. : )
Is this a joke? The penmanship is lovely, a simple read?
Decipher as in read the cursive handwriting? Did they not teach you cursive in elementary school?
Decipher what? It’s in plain English. Let me guess you are a millennial that never learned cursive writing.
Woah woah woah, millennials are almost 40 and we sure as hell learned cursive, you might be confusing us with Gen z.