MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Five
MarineLives Transcription & Editorial Policy: Draft Five
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 Four
Introduction to the High Court of Admiralty
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
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 Five: Coding buttons for metadata
HEADER
CASE
Draft Five: Coding buttons for text format and layout
Italic
Strike
Underline
Bold
Insert
Margin
Special characters (Add)
- # (New)
- [ (New)
- ] (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)
