MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Five

MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Five

Editorial history

26/08/12: CSG, created page

Draft Five: Transcription and Editorial policy

Draft of MarineLives Editorial Method/Directions for Transcribers

Draft of MarineLives Editorial Method/Directions for Transcribers
Revised September 15th, 2012
Charlene M. Eska and Colin Greenstreet
ceska@vt.edu, colin.greenstreet@gmail.com

This draft is current and should be applied to all transcriptions from September 16th, 2012

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.

EXAMPLE:

"3:th, 4:th, 5:th" should be transcribed as "3th, 4th, 5th"

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>.

EXAMPLES:

"y:e" should be transcribed as "the"
"y:t" should be transcribed as "that"
"y:m" should be tranScribed as "them"

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.

EXAMPLES:

"./."

":/:"

":-"

Transcribe any dots surrounding numerals.

EXAMPLE:

".1.", ".6th."

Preserve the page layout as much as possible when you transcribe, including the placement of signatures and line breaks within paragraphs.

EXAMPLE:

56. William ffowkes ^SIGNATURE ON BOTTOM RH SIDE^

The above text is produced using the NOTE function:

William ffowkes <note>SIGNATURE ON BOTTOM RH SIDE </note>

Where there is a marginal item and a main body text item within the same line in the original manuscript, transcribe the main body text line first, then add a space, transcribe the marginal item, preserving the lineation of the marginal item, and add a further space

EXAMPLE:

The code would be as follows:

31. did together with this deponent and others sayle and depart in and with
32. the sayd shipp from Gravesend about the ˹eleventh˺ eighth day of december 1654
33. XXXXXXXXX day And they entred into whole pay in the sayd shipp # ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT INSERTION MARK, DIRECTING ATTENTION TO TEXT IN LH MARGIN and the
34.
35. <margin value="Left"># upon the eighth day
36. of the sayd moneth,
37. William dixon</margin>
38.
39. sayd shipp arrived afterwards att ffalmouth and from thence

Follow the foliation of the original documentsm and enter the folio number, together with added recto or verso, in the HEADER information

EXAMPLE:

<folio>f.169r</folio>

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 words.

ADD LIST, OR ADD LINK

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.

EXAMPLE:

"allon" is transcribed as "allegation"

"arle" is transcribed as "article"

"depon" is transcribed as "deposition"

"depted" is transcribed as "departed"

"depo:t" is transcribed as "deponent"

"interr" is transcribed as "interrogatory" or "interrogatorie" depending on expanded form the clerk uses elsewhere on the page. If no expanded example, then use "interrogatory"

"p mo: is transcribed as "per moneth:

"pdposed" is transcribed as "predeposed"

"prsent" is transcribed as "present

"pused" is transcribed as "perused"

"recd" and "recvd" is transcribed as "received" and "received"

"sd" and "s:d" are transcribed as "said or sayd" depending on expanded form the clerk uses elsewhere on the page. If no expanded example, then use sayd"

"S:t" is transcribed as "Saint"

POLICY DECISION REQUIRED:

"arlate"

"interrate"

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)

[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.

--XSTRIKETHROUGHX-- 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.

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:

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

Draft Five: Coding buttons for metadata

HEADER

Generates the following code:

CASE

Generates the following code:

DEP

Generates the following code:

Draft Five: Coding buttons for text format and layout

Italic

Generates the following code: XXXX

Strike

Generates the following code: ~~XXXX~~

Underline

Generates the following code: XXXX

Bold

Generates the following code: XXXX

Insert

Generates the following symbols: ˹XXXX˺

Margin

Generates the following code: <margin value="XXXX">Margin</margin>

Special characters (Add)

# (New)

Square bracket - [ (New)

Square bracket - ] (New)

Draft Five: Coding buttons for Notes, Questions, and Help requests

Note (All notes to be added in CAPITALS)

Help (HELP request answers to be added in CAPITALS after the highlighted item, but still within the code (<help>Help request HELP ANSWER FROM A COLLEAGUE</help>

Question (New) (All questions to be added in CAPITALS)

MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Five

Contents

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Draft Five: Transcription and Editorial policy

Draft Five: Coding buttons for metadata

Draft Five: Coding buttons for text format and layout

Draft Five: Coding buttons for Notes, Questions, and Help requests

Draft Five: Coding buttons for semantic markup

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