---
name: paleography
description: Reads and transcribes images of old handwritten or printed records that the user supplies, such as parish baptism, marriage and burial registers, civil registers, notarial deeds and censuses in Portuguese, Spanish, Latin and Italian, with basic German Kurrent and French notes. Use when the user attaches or describes a document image, or asks to transcribe, translate, expand abbreviations or extract names, dates, parents and godparents into a structured abstract. Reports honest confidence and never guesses unclear names.
license: MIT
---

# Paleography: reading old records

Read records that the user supplies as images or as pasted text. You read the image yourself. The plugin has no OCR tool and does not fetch images from archives.

## Rules

1. Transcribe first. Compare with the tree second. Reading a name that you already expect is the main source of error. Do not open `get_person` before the transcription is done.
2. Never claim certainty on an unclear name, date or number. Give the best reading, the alternatives and the reason for doubt.
3. Never fill a gap silently. Mark what you cannot read. Mark what you restore.
4. Keep a clear line between three layers: what the page shows, what you expanded or normalized, and what you inferred.
5. Do not invent text to make a sentence complete. A partial transcription with honest marks is better than a smooth one.
6. Treat recent records as private. Records less than about 100 years old can name living people. Use them only for the user's own research and do not publish them.
7. Historical records can use harsh or outdated terms for race, status, slavery and legitimacy. Transcribe the words as written. Add a neutral note in your own words. Do not soften or remove the original word in the transcription.
8. Ask before saving anything to a project.

## Workflow

### 1. Intake

Ask for what you cannot see:
- Language and country or region, if unknown.
- Approximate years, the parish or the civil registry, and the record type.
- Which entry matters when the page has several.
- A closer crop or a better scan, if the text is small, skewed, cut off, faded or shows bleed-through from the other side.

State the image quality in one line: resolution, contrast, damage and what is cut off.

### 2. Orient and identify

- Find the page number, folio (`fl.`, `f.`) or entry number. Note whether you see the recto or the verso.
- Find the target entry. Note the margin notes, the headings and any later annotations in another hand.
- Identify the record type from its formula: baptism, marriage, burial, civil birth, civil marriage, civil death, census, deed, will. See [references/abbreviations.md](references/abbreviations.md) for formulas by language.
- Identify the hand: a secretary hand, a Kurrent hand, a printed form with handwritten fill-ins. Printed forms (civil registers after about 1850) put the fixed text in print and the data in handwriting.

### 3. Diplomatic transcription

Write the text line by line, as it appears. Keep the original spelling, capitalization, punctuation, abbreviations and line breaks. Number the lines. Use these marks.

| Mark | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| `[?]` after a word | Uncertain reading |
| `[word?]` | Best guess for an unclear word |
| `[word / other?]` | Two possible readings |
| `[illegible]` | Cannot read a word |
| `[illegible, 3 letters]` | Cannot read, with the length |
| `[...]` | A gap, a hole, a stain or a cut-off edge |
| `[sic]` | Written this way in the original, as a warning that it is not your error |
| `Ant.º [Antonio]` | Abbreviation with the expansion in brackets |
| `~text~` | Struck-through text |
| `^text^` | Text added above the line |
| `{margin: text}` | Margin note |
| `/` | End of a line, when you write the text as one paragraph |

Keep superscript letters on the line, for example `Ant.º`. Keep the tilde, for example `Joaõ`. Do not modernize anything at this layer.

### 4. Normalized transcription

Write a second version in modern spelling and punctuation, with abbreviations expanded and numbers written as digits. Keep proper names as written, and put the modern form in brackets when they differ. Example: `Joze [José] da Sylva [Silva]`. Keep the uncertainty marks.

### 5. Translation

Translate into the user's language. Translate close to the text. Mark uncertain terms with `[?]`. Keep technical words in the original with a gloss, for example `padrinho [godfather]`. Do not translate names. For Latin, translate the formula and keep the names in their Latin form first, then give the vernacular form in brackets: `Josephus [José]`.

### 6. Structured abstract

Fill every field that the entry states. Write "not stated" for the others. Do not infer.

```
Record type:
Event: [baptism | birth | marriage | burial | death | other]
Event date (as written):
Event date (normalized, ISO) and calendar:
Place of the event (church or registry, parish, municipality, diocese or district, country):
Principal(s) (full name as written, normalized name, age, sex, status):
Father (name, occupation, origin):
Mother (name, origin):
Legitimacy as stated:
Grandparents as stated:
Spouse(s) and their parents (marriage):
Godparents (padrinhos, padrinos, patrini, padrino):
Witnesses:
Officiant and title:
Informant and relation to the principal:
Occupation, residence and origin:
Cause of death or burial details (death or burial):
Margin notes and later annotations:
Source and image details (repository, series, page, entry number):
```

### 7. Confidence report

Rate each field high, medium or low. Give one reason for each medium or low rating. List the words that most need a second look, with the letters that make them doubtful. Suggest the next images to check: the same page in the index, the next entry, the sibling baptisms, a duplicate register.

Use this wording: "high" means every letter is clear. "medium" means one or two letters are unclear but context fits. "low" means the reading depends on context or on a guess.

### 8. Offer to save

Ask first. When the user agrees, call `add_research_entry` with type `evidence`.
- `title`: the event and the name, for example "Baptism of Joaquim Ferreira, 1850".
- `body`: the abstract and the confidence notes.
- `evidence.sourceKind`: `original` for an image of the register, `derivative` for an index or a transcript.
- `evidence.information`: `primary`, `secondary` or `undetermined`. A baptism date is usually primary. Parents' names and a birth date are `secondary` or `undetermined` unless the entry says who gave them.
- `evidence.evidenceType`: `direct` when the record states the answer, `indirect` when it gives a clue.
- `evidence.citation`: the citation, from the genealogy-research skill. Fill only the elements that you know.
- `evidence.repository`, `evidence.url` and `evidence.recordDate` when known.
- `evidence.transcription`: the diplomatic transcription, with the marks.
- `personRefs`: the refs of the people in the tree, only after the user confirms the match.

Do not store the image. Say so if the user asks. The plugin stores text.

## Reading method

- Read the whole entry once before you read any word closely.
- Use the context. A baptism entry has a known order: date, church, priest, child, parents, grandparents, godparents. Use it to test a doubtful word.
- Learn the scribe's letter shapes. Find a clear word with the same letter and compare shapes. Use the date or the name of the month to calibrate.
- Count the minims. In some hands `m`, `n`, `u` and `i` are strokes that look alike. Test each reading against the word length.
- Use the number of letters. If the reading needs more letters than the space allows, it is probably wrong.
- Use the name lists in the region. Common given names help: Antonio, Manoel, João, José, Francisco, Maria, Anna, Joaquim, Pedro, Luiz, Domingos in Portuguese records.
- Keep a list of confusions. For example `u/n`, `e/o`, `c/t`, `l/s`, `d/cl`, `f/s` (long s), `1/7`, `4/9`, `5/6`.
- Check numbers twice. Years and ages are the most important numbers and the easiest to misread.

## Common traps

- The long s (`ſ`) looks like `f` in older hands and prints.
- `u` and `v`, `i` and `j`, and `y` for `i` were used freely.
- Spelling before 1911 in Portuguese used `ph`, `th`, `ch` for `k`, double letters and `y`: Philippe, Thomaz, Manoel, Sylva, Joze.
- A tilde marks a nasal sound or an omitted `n` or `m` in Portuguese: `Joaõ` is João, `tãbem` is também. In Spanish and Latin, a bar over a word signals a contraction.
- Superscript letters mark an abbreviation: `Ant.º`, `Fran.co`.
- Months written `7bro`, `8bro`, `9bro` and `10bro` mean September to December. They were the 7th to 10th months in the old Roman count.
- Roman numerals can run together: `xii` for 12, `xxiiij` for 24.
- A year may be written in words, for example "mil oitocentos e cinquenta".
- The same page can hold entries in different hands. Check that you assign each margin note to the right entry.
- Duplicate registers exist. The text may differ in small details.

## Language notes

Detail and tables are in these files. Read the ones that match the record.
- [references/abbreviations.md](references/abbreviations.md): abbreviations and formulas for Portuguese, Spanish, Latin, Italian, German and French.
- [references/dates-money-units.md](references/dates-money-units.md): dates in words, feast days, regnal years, calendar changes, money and units.

Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil): baptism entries follow "Aos [day] dias do mês de [month] do ano de [year] ... batizei solenemente a [name], filho legítimo de [father] e de [mother], neto paterno de ... e materno de ... Foram padrinhos ...". Spelling before 1911 differs from modern Portuguese.

Spanish: baptism entries follow "En [place], a [day] de [month] de [year], yo [priest] bauticé a [name], hijo legítimo de ... y de ..., nieto ... Fueron padrinos ...". The word `dho` is `dicho`.

Latin: "Anno Domini [year] die [day] mensis [month] baptizavi infantem [name], filium legitimum [father] et [mother] coniugum, ... Patrini fuerunt ...". Names appear in Latin forms.

Italian: civil acts open with "L'anno [year], addì [day] del mese di [month], alle ore [hour], avanti di me ... è comparso ...". The word `fu` before a name means the person had died.

German (Kurrent) and French: read only with care. State the limits, give the transcription with many marks, and suggest that the user ask a specialist for key entries. See the references.

## Output order

1. One line on image quality and the entry you read.
2. Diplomatic transcription.
3. Normalized transcription.
4. Translation.
5. Structured abstract.
6. Confidence report and doubtful words.
7. Next steps and the offer to save.

Keep each part short. Do not add commentary between the parts.