From "decryption" to "translation"

[-JKP-]

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"... That second text you posted is incredibly difficult to read. "
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That funny loop shape that looks a bit like a squished "d" is actually an "e". If you can get used to that, then it's not so hard to read.


Some of the Gothic bookhands could be very nice, but the average person wrote cursive and Gothic cursive is pretty ugly (especially when abbreviated).

Gothic (and its cousin Anglicana) were harder to read than the Italian/humanist texts and eventually scholars had the good sense to abandon Gothic in favor of humanist scripts.

John Dee's formal handwriting is a good example of what humanists learned from the Italians. It's a nice calligraphic hand (as opposed to his note hand which was very scrawly).