How to begin
- Before you begin to carry out the exercises, read the Principles of transcription. There, we explain the rules which have been accepted during the design of the mechanisms that function on the website. It is worth getting to know them because in some cases they differ from the principles of transcription used in the editing of historical sources. For the needs of the website, uniform solutions for texts from different ages have been accepted. This required a simplification of classic rules in order to ensure correct functioning of the mechanism which checks the suitability of entries by users.
- If you are just beginning to decipher historical texts, you can take a look at the Tips for reading. There, you will find suggestions about how to deal with difficult cases and examples of such situations.
- The next step is to carry out the exercises. You can choose those ones from the list which suit you the most, taking into consideration the type of document, the preparation period and the language. To ease this process, you can sort the whole list. You can also define the filtering criteria, and then the list is restricted only to those documents that meet your requirements.
- Each document is presented on the list together with a picture, which allows you to immediately see what kind of writing type you are dealing with. In addition, for each of them, the level of difficulty has been defined with a coloured strip highlighting the name of the exercise, thanks to which it is easier and faster to choose the most suitable one.
- When you have chosen an exercise, you will firstly be able to get to know the document which you want to decipher. After clicking on Show the transcription you will find its correct meaning, and clicking on Decipher by yourself leads you to the tool for deciphering. While deciphering, or after finishing, you can check if you have avoided mistakes or obtain the set of mistakes together with the correct solution. In addition, you will have many helpful materials at your disposal for every document.
Good luck!