Cursive to text: read a handwritten letter into Word

How to convert cursive to text

1. Photograph the page. Lay the letter flat in daylight and shoot straight down, with all four corners in the frame. One page per photo.
2. Choose the photo. A JPG, PNG or WEBP photo, or a PDF of one page, up to 5 MB.
3. Press Get the text. The first lines of the letter appear after a few seconds, typed out.
4. Enter your email and the code. We send a 6-digit code. It opens the full text and creates a free account if you have none. No password needed.
5. Download the Word file. Open the .docx in Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice and edit it like any typed document. You can also copy the text or download it as .txt.

Which handwritten pages can it read?

LoreAI reads cursive written in the Latin alphabet, the joined-up handwriting taught in American, British and most European schools. A neat fair copy from the 1800s and fast, loopy everyday handwriting both come back as plain typed text.

Letters and postcards

Read line by line, with the writer's own line breaks and hyphens kept

Diaries and journals

Dated entries come back in the order they were written

Family records

Notes in a family Bible, ledger entries, recipe cards and captions in a photo album

Mixed pages

A printed letterhead or form with handwritten entries comes back as one text, in reading order

Modern notes

Class notes, cards and lists in cursive or in print

Old spellings and abbreviations stay as written

Letter writers a century ago shortened a lot. Abbreviations for first names and titles were common in handwritten documents until the early 20th century[1]. A letter may close with "yr obt svt" for "your obedient servant", and inst., ult. and prox. mean this month, last month and next month[1].

LoreAI types these the way the writer wrote them, so "&c." stays "&c." and an old spelling is not modernized. The Word file reads like the letter, and you decide what to expand. For a word you don't recognize, the UNCW library guide suggests the OneLook dictionary search, which also finds words from a partial spelling[1].

Can it translate cursive from a picture?

Yes, in the LoreAI app. Upload the photo, choose OCR + Translate and pick English or one of 105 languages. The app detects the language of the letter by itself. You get one Word file in the new language, with names, dates and places as the writer spelled them.

A great-grandfather's letter home in German, Italian or Polish becomes an English Word file you can print and share. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages and 3 MB. For a letter of several pages, combine the photos into one PDF with your phone's scan function first, so the pages stay in order.

Free ways to read cursive from a photo

For a line or two on your phone, Lens and Live Text are the quickest. For a whole letter you want to keep, correct, print for the family or translate, a Word file is easier to work with than copied text.

How do I photograph an old letter?

• Flatten folds under a sheet of glass or a heavy book at the edges, away from the writing.
• Use daylight from a window. Turn off the flash, which leaves a glare spot on glossy paper.
• Fill the frame with the page. Google's guidance for its own converter is text at least 10 pixels high, sharp images and even lighting[4].
• Turn the photo right side up before you upload it.
• Photograph each side of a postcard or sheet separately.

What happens to your photo

The photo goes to LoreAI's OCR provider, which reads it once and deletes it right after. The typed text waits on LoreAI's server for 1 hour so you can open it after signing in, and until then only the browser that uploaded it can see it. Then it is deleted.

Questions people ask