Paleography is the study of old handwriting. Paleographers peer far back into the past—to ancient times, in fact, soon after written communication began. The scribblings of the long dead have always fascinated us, much as early photographs do, by giving us glimpses of people both a lot like us and different, having already fallen victim to inexorable time. Unlike early photos, though, you’ve got to sit and decipher old handwriting.
Early Modern Paleography—that period from the Middle Ages to the 1700s or so—is tricky enough. You’ve got those crazy shapes, all swoops and curls, and weird abbreviations. And if you read only English (as I do, alas), there was no such thing as proper spelling. Seems all you had to do is sound out a word in your head, then run through the alphabet until you found a group of letters that more or less matched that sound. Clearly, when the chips were down, pronunciation trumped spelling.
Of course, the past three centuries are what get the most attention these days, perhaps because of a surging interest in genealogy. We’ve always looked back—but now we’ve got slick online research tools and fancy Retina displays on which to study old documents. Most formerly mystifying handwriting peculiarities are starting to become familiar: that “long “s” that looks like a lowercase “f”, the “p” with the tall ascender. Then there are those curious flourishes at the ends of words, like the “d” that loops back over, or the abrupt upward arc-like stroke at the end of an ultimate “t.” Heck, it’s not all that uncommon to come across an uncrossed “t.” Or weird-looking ampersands. Or misspelled words.
Misspellings, really, were so common through the 19th century that you’re often faced with a puzzle of context—is that “dich” as in “ditch,” or “dish”?—and punctuation was either whimsical or nonexistent. But there’s gold in them there old scribblings, if you prospect long enough. Take, for instance, this excerpt from a letter written on 21 June 1836 by venerable Texas pioneer woman Emily Austin Perry (Stephen F Austin’s sister) to her husband James at Peach Point Plantation:
If you should have Carpenters imployed, I wish you to have a Necessary House built, in the Back Yard, in the corner of the Fence by the Lane, and on a line with the Hen-House, it can set over the Dich; these City Dames will think it Horrible to run into the Woods.
I’ve learned a lot and had a lot of fun. But my years of poring over old letters and journals, deciphering the handwriting of those long-dead souls, has had me wondering lately about paleographers in some future time when “literally,” “figuratively,” and “virtually” are synonymous, and “u” is generally accepted to mean “you.” What will be their main challenges when, say, they look back on handwriting from the late 20th century?
Assuming our text type will look about the same, and that our hand-lettering (if any) will still resemble it, here are some speculative puzzles for paleographers yet to come who face the task of deciphering cursive script:
Might future generations decipher this? (Professor)
• Uppercase A, E, F, G, I, J, L, Z, etc.—these look nothing like printed text
• Lowercase “s”—what’s that lumpy-looking thing, anyway?
• Lowercase “r”—another lumpy-looking thing
• Lowercase “b”—hardly a resemblance
• Lowercase “x”—ditto
• Lowercase “z”—ditto
Of course there will be lingering ironies—e.g., everyone will know just what “&” means, even though they’ll have no clue that the shape itself came from combining the letters “et” (and) in Latin. And the number sign (#) will officially be known as a “hash.” But my guess is there’ll still be people who will appreciate antique penmanship in the year 2100 or 2200. They’ll browse our digital archives, squint at our looping lowercase “l”s, consult their reference materials when they come across a “Z.” Somewhere beyond our handwriting, then, they’ll feel a nudge of recognition—and a twinge at the passage of time.
