The site draws on a wide variety of texts written in English between 1500 and 1800. Lest some of you start getting glazy-eyed, let me point out that the first text the user gets to transcribe is a letter penned by the Protestant Elizabeth, when she was still a Princess, defending herself to her Catholic half-sister Mary Tudor against charges of treason. Hey, if you’re going to learn to read old writing, you couldn’t pick a more fascinating and compelling correspondence.

There is something rather reflexive about using a new communication medium like the Web to explore old forms of communications like the writing of centuries past. Sadly, the website sometimes feels like the creators of the site, though passionate about their topic, lack expertise on how to take full advantage of the web. Don’t get me wrong, the site is deeply enjoyable, in spite of its shortcomings, but the mild annoyances build up as you get deeper into the site until they result in occasional frustrations.

What’s It All About?

From the home page of the site, the user is directed to the "Where to Start" section that offers an overview of a few key principles of decoding old handwriting.

From there, the reader is drawn in by this compelling paragraph:

The huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. The oredr of the ltteers in the wrod can be in a total mses but you can sitll raed it wouthit any porbelm.

                           From the National Archives’ site on Palaeography.

And it’s all uphill from there. I mean it. It’s hard work to decipher this stuff. But lucky for the user, the site offers a great walkthrough of basic tricks, concepts, and techniques for getting a step up on the learning curve. Covering principles of spelling, standard abbreviations, and transcribing enables the reader to decipher seemingly impossible words like these:

Following the "Where To Begin" section is "Quick reference," which explains some of the peculiarities of past centuries in regard to topics like dating, measurements, and money.

And that’s it! After those few pages, users are ready to begin the Interactive Tutorial section.

Tutorials consist of two primary elements. The first is the main browser window with the graphic of the old text and the input box for transcribing. The graphic includes a small-scale zoom, but this “mini-zoom” underperforms through poor usability, and insufficiently magnified close-ups. The second element of the tutorial is a popup window that allows access to supplemental material that users will need: a glossary, a transcribed alphabet of the writing in the text in question, a complete transcription, and a handy and powerful zoom tool to closely analyze the text to be translated. As my description suggests, the secondary popup window actually houses four essential tools that are needed at any given time. The result was that I operated the tutorial with five open browser windows.

When going through the tutorial with five windows open, tabbing from one to the next in order to complete the transcription, a user would be forgiven for thinking it would all just be a lot easier if printed papers were spread out on a desk in front of her for quick access. Indeed, as if reading the user’s mind, the site makes available PDFs of each activity for download.

There are 10 tutorials, each of increasing complexity, and using texts as varied as the first Elizabethan letter mentioned above, to the statement of James Machary , an Irishman who spied on the Spanish Armada for the British Crown, and the particulars of the sale of a Berkshire manor in 1554.

For users who make their way through the 10 activities, there are about 30 more texts that can be viewed, explored, and downloaded. Here the user can choose whether they’d rather review a recipe for mince pies from the early 17th century, or a plea for royal clemency from 1584. The "Further Reading" activities do not include the Interactive Tutorial component, they just include the secondary popup with the Zoomable Text, Transcript, as well as some background information.

Polishing off this thorough learning experience is a simple and mostly well-conceived Ducking-Stool game, in which the user must correctly transcribe words presented, lest the poor woman sitting on the ducking stool be drowned. Think "hangman", but instead of a stick-figure and a noose, you have an animated woodcut of 17th c. torture. How can you not just love that?