Interpretation of certificates?

Question:How do I get the writing on birth and marriage certificates deciphered?. The certificates are from the late 1800s and the lettering is somewhat difficult to read

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: How do I get the writing on birth and marriage certificates deciphered?. The certificates are from the late 1800s and the lettering is somewhat difficult to read

One "trick" is letter comparison. Look elsewhere for a similar stroke sequence where it is unambiguous. For example, if you know the city is El Paso, then you can see the writer's strokes for the capital E and P, and of course the lower case letters as well. In some cases, you can eliminate a letter (for example, the unknown letter is not found elsewhere in the document - but you can eliminate as possibilities those identifed elsewhere in the document.

It's a struggle, but that's just what handwriting experts do in examining the document - as well as knowning certain writing styles common to the time.

Scan them, put them on the web and ask the question again.

Don't know of any specialist companies that do this sort of translation.

You'll need to scan them so that people online can see them. Once you get used to how people wrote back then, it's not so hard to read. Perhaps you can scan them, and add the links here?

Victorian writing is usally quite standard and quite easy to read when compared to the earlier 16th and 17th century secretary hands. The more documents you see, the easier they become to read.

Put a link to the image up at somewhere like imageshack or photobucket and let some of us have a look at it for you and attempt a translation.