Handwriting Transcription
The first part of this assignment involved completing the exercises on the University of Nottingham’s website where I had to practice transcribing medieval manuscripts. The handwriting was almost illegible to me and I felt like I was reading a different language. I had the following struggles:
- The letters all blended together so it was hard to tell what word was being written.
- The difference in spelling made the word foreign.
- The presence of medieval letter made the words unrecognizable.
- I was unfamiliar with the medieval abbreviations.
- The ornate features of some of the fonts made the text less legible because I couldn’t tell what was part of a letter and what was simply decoration.
The second part of this assignment involved completing a longer transcription of a manuscript, Wilfred Owen’s poems. The first poem, “1914”, was straightforward and easy to transcribe. Transcribing a poem from the last century was easier since the customs of writing were more familiar to me and I was aware of the context of the piece (World War I) so I could understand why certain words were chosen. I was a lot more confident in my transcription as a result.
The second poem, “The Draft”, was harder to transcribe. There were several sections that were struck out by the author with rewrites written in very small handwriting squished between lines. It was hard to tell which words were supposed to be included in the poem so authorial intention was more difficult to discern.
Leave a Reply