Palaeography - reading early writing

Palae What?

Palaeography is the study of ancient writing. Once you get back to early records, you'll find you're faced with a number of challenges.

Latin may be used.
The style of writing may be unfamiliar.
The ink may have faded or even dropped off the page.
The pages may be stained with mould.
The spelling used is, shall we say, 'quaint'.
Numbers may be written in Roman Numerals.
Months may be partly written in Roman Numerals. E.g. October may be written VIIIber, (it was the eighth month by the old calendar).
Punctuation was not very good and often omitted altogether.
Unlike today, a capital letter was often used mid-sentence to emphasis any word, felt important.
Three different types of abbreviations were in common use.
Some expressions were used with which you might not be familiar.

All of these factors make reading early writing a challenge to the amateur genealogist.

A useful site with tutorials on reading old documents is that at the UK National Archives