English Renaissance Handwriting

The origins of this app lie in online exercises in palaeography developed for postgraduate students at the University of Leeds in West Yorkshire, U.K. The aim is to provide practice in the transcription of sixteenth and seventeenth century hands. Many of the manuscripts, especially after 1600, use a varying mixture of secretary and italic letter forms.

Users can examine 30 selected manuscripts, zoom in on individual words, attempt transcription and receive immediate feedback. They can optionally compare their transcription with a full transcript. The user's transcripts can be saved and reopened. The saved transcripts are accessible via File Sharing in iTunes.