MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Four
MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Four
Editorial history
26/08/12: CSG, created page
Contents
Suggested links
Transcription & Editorial Policy
MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft One
MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Two
MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Three
MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Five
Introduction to the High Court of Admiralty
Draft Four: Transcription and Editorial policy
Draft of MarineLives Editorial Method/Directions for Transcribers
Draft of MarineLives Editorial Method/Directions for Transcribers
Revised August 18, 2012
Charlene M. Eska
ceska@vt.edu
The aim of the transcribers is to create a semi-diplomatic edition of the HCA documents. As
such, transcribers will, for the most part, transcribe exactly what they see using the following
conventions.
Letter forms
Spelling is not standardized, so it is important to transcribe what you see and resist the urge
to ‘correct’ the spelling. Any letters that are written superscript should be lowered.
U/V, u,v Transcribe each of these letters as they appear in the documents. Do not make the
determination of whether the graph represents a vowel or a consonant.
i/j, I Transcribe each of these letters as they appear in the documents.
Y Although it looks like the letter ‘y’, it is really a form of þ ‘thorn’ and should be transcribed
as ‘th’. Common sense will tell you whether you are dealing with <y> or <þ>.
Punctuation
Punctuation is different from what we are used to. Transcribe the marks as you see them. The
only exception to this will be the dash used to fill the ends of lines; ignore these marks. Do not
try to impose modern punctuation conventions.
Transcribe any dots surrounding numerals.
Preserve the page layout as much as possible when you transcribe, including the placement of
signatures and line breaks within paragraphs.
Follow the foliation of the original documents.
Capitalization
Do not capitalize letters that are not written in capitals. Transcribe what you see. An index will
be created with standardized forms of names, places, ships, etc., and all spelling variants will be
indexed accordingly.
Abbreviations
& The ampersand represents the word ‘and’. Transcribe it as ‘and’ without putting it in italics. If
it is part of a Latin phrase, transcribe it as ‘et’.
Some words are commonly abbreviated, e.g. ‘arle’ for ‘article’. Put supplied letters in italics. See
webpage for a list of commonly abbreviated words.
Contractions and Suspensions
XXX All letters supplied by the transcribers should be in italics. This will be the case wherever
contractions and suspensions are expanded.
Tildas represent single or double ‘m’ or ‘n’. Be mindful of the different ways of
representing ‘per’, ‘pro’, ‘par’, ‘pre’, etc. along with ‘-con’.
[XXX] Any letters supplied should be enclosed in square brackets. This is sometimes the case
when a letter has been omitted by mistake. Use sparingly.
{…} Letters lost due to staining, damage, etc. Give an indication, if possible, of how many
letters are lost and if any letter forms are even partially visible.
XXX Use the strikethrough function to indicate text deleted in the documents. Transcribe as
much as you can see.
˹ XXX ˺ Text written between the lines or in the margins. If written in the margins, indicate in a
footnote whether the text is marg. sup., marg. inf., marg. dext., or marg. sin.
Draft Four: Suggested coding buttons to be added by Giovanni
The following is suggested for discussion with Giovanni, and is not a firm request for implementation. Giovanni returns from a camping trip on Monday 27th August and will contact Colin and Charlene following his return to explore these suggestions.
Draft of tabs for Giovanni to include for the transcribers
Charlene Eska
MarineLives
August 23, 2012
1. Place name Do we want these items to appear in different colors in the text to aid
indexing?
2. Personal name
3. Ship name
4. Commodity
5. Marine term Colin, do you want to tag anything else along these lines?
6. Underline
7. Italic
8. Strike through
9. Do we want to include transcription symbols such as ˹ ˺? This is what is used to
indicate insertions in the text or margins.
10. à
11. á
12. è
13. é
14. ì
15. í
16. ò
17. ó
18. ù
19. ú I don’t know if we need all these vowels, but it seems safe to include them.
20. note This is to be used for additional notes and explanations regarding the transcribed
text.
21. Text aligned right
22. Text aligned left
23. Text aligned middle
24. Text aligned top left
25. Text aligned top right
26. Text aligned bottom right
27. Text aligned bottom left
What other items/symbols are we missing? Can we have a tab labeled ‘Help’ that generates text
in red so that transcribers can indicate to their advisors exactly where they have questions? Do
we want symbols for the punctuation marks?
Colin's comments on Draft Four
Charlene's gloss on Draft Four
2012-08-20 19:00:15 nbsp I mentioned this to Colin the other day and he told me Jill had already written a model transcription for Challenge 3. However I am still wondering how we would show in the transcription a table like that seen in that excerpt? I'm not sure how, using scripto, we would be able to demonstrate this, other than putting spaces and trying to line up each line to make it look like a table? --Users/williamtullett
2012-08-22 04:57:26 nbsp William: Charlene, Giovanni and I are working on a set of clarifications of Draft Three to handle some of the rarer, but neverthless important, layout aspects of HCA manuscripts. This includes thinking how efficiently to represent tables. We also need to think through how tables will be handled in semantic markup. Presumably they will need to be coded to show that the numbers represent pounds, shillings and pence, and the line items to the left are line items --Users/ColinGreenstreet
