Also known as "human OCR" or "HOCR", human optical character recognition is the process of reading printed or rendered text and transcribing it into a more portable format such as plaintext or a node on E2. With the web tranforming into a graphic- and Flash-addled monstrosity, much information is available only in inflexible, unsearchable rendered graphical form. HOCR also names the result of such transcription: the new plaintext or html.

Example: Some nodes are Copy and Paste, but some are HOCR of otherwise unsearchable Flash sites.