Cursive to text: read old handwriting as plain text
A grandparent's letters, a diary, a page from a family Bible: cursive that is hard to read today. Take a photo of the page, and FamilyLore writes it out for you in plain type you can copy.
Upload a cursive page3 pages free, no account. Then a page a day with a free account. No card.
From photo to text in three steps
Photograph the page
Lay it flat in daylight, without the flash. A phone photo of the whole page is enough.
Upload it
English is already chosen. If you know roughly when it was written, pick the era: it helps with old letter shapes and spellings.
Read it
You get the page as it was written, line by line, with the words FamilyLore is unsure of marked. Correct any word you know better.
Questions about converting cursive to text
- Is the cursive to text converter free?
- Yes. You can read 3 pages with no account and no card. With a free account you then read a page a day, for good. To read whole bundles of letters, see Plans.
- What happens to my letters?
- Your documents are private by default. Only a page you share can be seen, by anyone with its link, and only that page. You can delete your account and every image you uploaded at any time.
- Can it read old cursive, not just modern handwriting?
- Yes. It is made for old family papers: 18th and 19th century hands, faded ink, crossed-out words. A word it is not sure of is marked for you to check, and where the ink is too faint it leaves a gap rather than a guess.
- Is it a cursive translator too?
- If the letter is in another language, yes. FamilyLore also reads German Kurrent and Sütterlin, Russian and Ukrainian, and Yiddish handwriting, and can translate the page into English. Choose the language on the upload page.