Research in primary sources involves taking notes, which often includes transcribing selections from the sources. Since handwritten sources from the nineteenth century and before can be difficult to read, in-class sessions in which students work together on deciphering and transcribing individual two-page spreads from Laban Morey Wheaton’s daybook build experience and confidence in this skill that belongs in every historian’s toolkit.As we read primary sources, transcribe them, and take notes on their content, historians begin to interpret the sources. Interpretive coding using eXtensible Markup Language and the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative (XML/TEI) makes this interpretive process concrete. Thus, students have an opportunity to reflect on assumptions that affect their interpretations of primary sources.