Scientists seek assistance in decoding the "doctor's handwriting" from 200 years of historical documents that remain difficult to interpret.

Legends abound regarding the elusive handwriting of doctors that not everyone can decipher. It seems that handwritten documents induce stress not only for ordinary people but also for scholars. This is particularly true for the staff at the National Archives of the United States, who struggle to classify and interpret handwritten historical documents spanning over 200 years, as reported by Popular Science.

According to Suzanne Isaac, community manager of the National Archives Catalog, reading cursive is a superpower. It's not just a matter of whether someone studied handwriting in school, but also how frequently they use it today. Consequently, researchers have had to seek assistance from volunteer archivists to help transcribe historical documents. Notably, many of these documents date back to the era of the War of Independence, known for its looping and flowing script.

Today, Isaac coordinates over 5,000 civilian archivists who assist in reading and transcribing some of the more than 300 million digitized documents in the catalog. Researchers state that volunteers help decipher a wide range of documents: from pension records and field notes made by geographers working along the Mason-Dixon line to immigration and census records.

The National Archives reports that volunteers can register online. While reading handwritten text can be beneficial, it’s not always necessary for certain records. Pension records from the War of Independence include an option labeled "cursive not required," allowing volunteers to mark those that have already been transcribed for easier access.

It’s worth noting that cursive instruction was once standard in classrooms across the United States, with students even receiving grades for penmanship. However, with the advent of typewriters and computers, this subject began to fade away. By 2010, Common Core standards shifted the focus to keyboarding skills. Nevertheless, 14 states still mandate that cursive be taught in schools, regardless of its diminishing use in daily life.

Interestingly, in 2023, California passed a law requiring cursive instruction from first to sixth grade. Local authorities cited the reading of primary source historical documents, such as those found in the National Archives, as one of the arguments for this requirement.

Moreover, according to neurobiologist Claudia Aguirre, an increasing number of studies in the field of neurobiology support the idea that writing letters in cursive, compared to printing, activates specific neural pathways that facilitate and enhance overall learning and language development.

Research comparing handwritten input to typed input shows that writing with a pen on paper remains the most beneficial. However, the greatest advantages for memory retention and learning new vocabulary are linked to the act of writing itself, rather than using cursive instead of print.