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Transcribing Cross-Writing Makes Brain Explode
7/2/2025 7:46:00 AM
by Dave Tabler
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| Civil War book project and discovering that 19th-century soldiers wrote over their own text to save paper |
Working on a new Civil War book project and just discovered the maddening 19th-century practice of "cross-writing" - where people would turn their paper 90 degrees and write DIRECTLY OVER their existing text to save paper!
My editor took one look at this diary page sample and quoted Lewis Carroll: "Cross writing makes me cross." Same, Lewis. SAME.
Makes perfect sense for Civil War soldiers in remote camps where fresh paper wasn't exactly Amazon Prime delivery... but DEAR LORD, trying to decipher faded ink letters going both horizontally AND vertically is like solving a puzzle designed by someone who clearly hated future historians. 😵💫
Plot twist: AI transcription tools are actually AMAZING at this! They nail about 80% of it, and that's enough context for me to go "OH! That's what he meant when he wrote about..." frantically scribbles notes
Technology: 1, Impossible 19th-century handwriting: 0
More details on this project coming soon! Just need to finish untangling a few more crossed wires... I mean, crossed writings. 📜✍️
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Web Site:
Dave Tabler
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The Search for Edward Lewis
by Glenn Martin
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 This is the story of the author’s great great grandparents, Edward Lewis and Sarah Crosby, who were convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land in the 1840s. It is told from the perspective of a detective agency searching for what happened to Edward, w |
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