MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Version 6 Current Policy

MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Version 6 Current Policy

This is current policy and should be applied to all transcriptions from June 1st, 2014

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.

Punctuation

Punctuation is different from what we are used to, there are often marks above and below letters and at the end of lines - ignore these marks. Do not try to impose modern punctuation conventions.

Capitalization

Do not capitalize letters that are not written in capitals. Transcribe what you see.

Be particularly careful that you do not capitalise the names of people, places, and ships if they are not capitalised in the original.

Be particularly observant of the differences between lower and upper case "c/C" and "h/H"

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. Below is a list of commonly abbreviated and contracted words.

Letters lost due to manuscript staining or damage

Leave out an crossings out. Letters that are difficult to read due to staining or damage can be indicated with a ?.

Spacing

Only ever leave one space after a full stop, comma, semi-colon, or any form of punctuation, no matter how much space the clerk left.

Line breaks

Line breaks in the original manuscript should be shown using a carriage return

Words which are split over lines and which are marked so by the clerk should be shown with "=" (which is the typical symbol used by clerks to indicate such an event)

EXAMPLE:

Thomas Sharpe of the parish of Saint Stephen Coleman=
Street London merchant Late Purser of the sayd shipp
the Swan now called the Satisfaction aged 26, yeares

Tildas (horizonal lines over a letter)

Tildas represent single or double ‘m’ or ‘n’. Be mindful of the different ways of representing ‘per’, ‘pro’, ‘par’, ‘pre’, etc. along with ‘-con’.

EXAMPLES:

"comonly" (with a tilda over the m) should be transcribed as "commonly" (with the second m inserted by the transcriber and italicised)