Old letters to text
Transcribe old family letters, diaries and records from a photo or scan. Built for the loops and flourishes of 18th, 19th and early 20th century handwriting.
Files are processed and immediately discarded. We don't keep them.
Tested on real historical manuscripts
We tested DocVolta on the Transcribe Bentham collection: 18th and 19th century English manuscripts in period handwriting, with transcriptions made by experts. On full pages it read about 95% of characters correctly. That is good enough to save hours of squinting, but not good enough to skip checking.
What to check in the result
- Names, places and dates. Context can't help with a surname or a parish, so these are the words most worth comparing against the original.
- Old spellings. It sometimes modernises a spelling, for example reading "submitt" as "submit". If you need the exact original spelling, compare closely.
- Crossings-out and insertions. Words squeezed between lines or struck through may be included, left out, or placed differently.
Getting a good photo of an old letter
- Lay the page flat under soft, even light. Avoid flash on old paper.
- Photograph one page at a time and fill the frame with the writing.
- For fragile documents, a scan at 300 dpi or higher works best.
Cross-written letters, where the writer turned the page and wrote across their own lines to save paper, are not supported yet.
Questions
How accurate is it on old handwriting?
On 18th and 19th century English manuscripts it read about 95% of characters correctly in our tests. Always check names, places and dates against the original.
Does it keep the original spelling?
Mostly, but not always. It sometimes modernises an old spelling, so compare carefully if exact spelling matters to your research.
Are my family documents kept?
No. Each image is processed and discarded as soon as the text is returned, and it is read on our own hardware, not sent to an outside AI service.
Does it read other languages?
It has been tested on English. Other languages may work but haven't been measured.
More handwriting tools
Handwriting to text · Cursive to text · Handwritten notes to text · Handwriting to Word · Handwritten PDF to text