Palaeography

How it is used

Focuses on scripts and hands; understanding the language is a related but separate skill.

Example sentences

1. Palaeography helped her distinguish two clerks in the same register.

   Handwriting features can identify different writing hands.

2. The palaeography class practised reading unfamiliar abbreviations.

   Decipherment requires recognizing historical writing conventions.

Common collocations

• study palaeography
• palaeographical analysis

Related terms

• manuscriptA book or document written by hand, especially one produced before printing became common; also an author's text before it is published.
• source criticismThe careful evaluation of a historical source to judge where it came from, who made it and why, and how reliable and useful it is for a particular question.

More terms: Sources and Archives

• primary source
• secondary source
• archive
• bias
• census
• chronicle
• oral history
• inscription
• provenance
• archivist
• diplomatics
• codicology