• he/him

I've not gotten any good at writing descriptions since I first made my tumblr and by god I'm not about to start now.


www.in-mutual-weirdness.tumblr.com

JhoiraArtificer
@JhoiraArtificer

I probably shouldn't be surprised but you can sign up to be a volunteer transcriber of documents held in the US National Archives! Apparently they are particularly looking for people who can read cursive for the current Revolutionary War pension document archive project, but there's plenty of typed documents if that's more your speed!

I've really appreciated all the digitized film they've put up for free on youtube, so this feels like a small way to contribute back.


pervocracy
@pervocracy

I'm getting into this and it's a great way to make something productive out of my PDF hobby!

And one thing I've learned already... if any old crabs tell you "back in the day, people learned proper penmanship!", they are wrong. People wrote by hand because they had to and they were mostly terrible at it.

If you were drafting up a fancy document you could hire a professional - the writing in the Constitution looks nice because they paid a scribe named Jacob Shallus $30 to "engross" it by copying it into large clear handwriting. But the things regular people wrote themselves, the ledger entries and personal notes? They've always been scribbles! There was no golden age of penmanship where people's grocery lists looked like the Coca-Cola logo! It did not happen! I'll fight you! You get a pen and I get a typewriter and we'll see who's mightier.


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in reply to @pervocracy's post:

uh oh, folks, the ink is getting fainter and fainter... when will he dip his pen? it's gotta be soon, the crowd is on the edge of their seats... IT'S HAPPENING! BENJAMIN K LEWIS IS. DIPPING. HIS. PEN!!! oh no but what's this? it's dripping! oh no! the upset of the century! but Benny Lewis is, folks, he is still writing!

I wrote recently about looking though the "baby book" my mom wrote a bunch of stuff in the first few years I was alive, and I'm 50, I grew up with cursive, and mom's was A Great Deal Neater Than Mine Ever Was, but, still, sure, I can read it, but, also, Fucking Pain In The Ass to read...

One of the first jobs I got was transcribing old war correspondence and did you know you know if you set your mind to it you can make every single cursive letter look exactly the same

You get so much Penmanship Discourse in fountain pen circles (which I'm in because I like the pretty pens, and also because I need to write without applying pressure for medical reasons). No, my writing does not look like the Coca-Cola logo, but it's readable and that's better than a lot of people manage. Or ever managed.