Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each obstacle to reading an old document: is it about the script itself or about language and convention?
Groups: The script itself · Language and convention
- The Latin is an administrative dialect thick with formulae
- Legal boilerplate occupies most of the document
- Long s looks like f; u and v are not yet distinct
- Joined ligatures and obsolete letterforms
Hints
- Only half the difficulty concerns letterforms.
- Knowing what the terms and formulas meant is the other half.
Show the answer
The script itself: Long s looks like f; u and v are not yet distinct, Joined ligatures and obsolete letterforms
Language and convention: The Latin is an administrative dialect thick with formulae, Legal boilerplate occupies most of the document
Why
Only half the difficulty is letterforms. Beginners assume paleography is about deciphering shapes; most of the work is knowing what a fifteenth-century clerk in this office meant by a word he never bothered to define.
Practise Archives and Paleography
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
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