What is Palaeography?
Palaeography (British) or paleography (American) is the study of ancient handwriting. This discipline tackles two main difficulties.
First, how to decipher individual characters, because alphabets evolve constantly. Second, how to interpret the many abbreviations that scribes often used, partly to save space and also to speed up the writing process.
Deciphering ancient documents is a useful skill for a genealogist because knowledge about individual letter-forms, ligatures, punctuation, and abbreviations, enables the palaeographer to read the text as the scribe intended it to be read.
Latest posts in Education & Training
East Tennessee Historical Society
The East Tennessee Historical Society run a series of monthly Saturday workshop...
http://www.101genealogy.com/east-tennessee-historical-society/
Reading old handwriting 1500 - 1800 (online tutorial)
The National Archives offer a free online tutorial about reading old handwriting...
http://www.101genealogy.com/reading-old-handwriting-1500-1800-online-tutorial/
Palaeography - Scottish documents
The Scottish Handwriting website offers online tuition to historians, genealogis...
http://www.101genealogy.com/palaeography-scottish-documents/
English Handwriting 1500 - 1700
Here's an awful messy-looking site from Cambridge University. However it does o...
http://www.101genealogy.com/english-handwriting-1500-1700/
