Darwin Online manuscript transcription policy

Darwin Online manuscript transcription policy v9

The manuscript transcriptions undertaken by this project serve the dual purpose of being readable and electronically searchable. They are published online in conjunction with facsimile images of the original manuscript when possible. The texts are prepared in accordance with the XHTML 1.0 (Transitional) DTD. The UTF-8 encoding is used for all content. A separate transcription guide is provided for the transcription of published or printed works: 'Darwin Online print transcription policy'.

The general method of transcription is based largely on the superbly useful example of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin. This means a 'clear-text' transcription, which leaves the text largely free of editorial symbols indicating insertions, and other alterations where they occur. The spelling, punctuation and grammar of the original document is striclty retained. Capital letters are transcribed as they occur except in certain cases, such as 'm', 'k', and 'c', which are often written somewhat larger than others as initial letters of words. In these cases an attempt is made to follow the normal practice of the writer.

Some misformed letters do, or could, affect the meaning of a word. The most common example is inadvertent crossing of 'l'. A 't' is transcribed when it is clear that this was the intended letter.

Deletions which are still legible are given as ~~struck-threw~~ text.

Italic square brackets [ ] enclose conjectured readings and descriptions of illegible passages. To avoid confusion, in the few instances in which Darwin himself used square brackets, they have been changed to parentheses.

Material that is irrecoverable because the manuscript has been damaged is indicated by angle brackets { } any text supplied within them is provided by the editors.

Words and passages that have been underlined for emphasis are rendered italic. Where the author of a manuscript has indicated greater emphasis by underlining a word or passage two or more times, the text is rendered bold.

Paragraphs are often not clearly indicated. In these cases, and when the subject is clearly changed in very long stretches of text, a new paragraph is silently added. Special manuscript devices delimiting sections or paragraphs, for example, blank spaces left between sections of text and lines drawn across the page, are treated as normal paragraph indicators and are not specially marked or recorded unless their omission would make the text unclear.

Marginalia or notes that run into the margins, or are continued at the document's head or foot, are transcribed at the point in the text at which the editors believe they were intended to be read. The placement of such an addition is only recorded in a footnote if it seems to the editors to have some significance or if the position at which it should be transcribed is unclear.

The hand-drawn illustrations and diagrams that occur are usually omitted as facsimiles of the manuscripts are provided.

Tables are reproduced as close to the original format as possible.

The transcribed text follows as closely as possible the layout of the source, although no attempt is made to produce a type-facsimile of the manuscript: word-spacing and line-division in the running text are not adhered to.

If the name of a person mentioned in a manuscript is incomplete or incorrectly spelled, the full, correct form is given in a footnote. Footnotes are given with superscript numerals e.g. ¹(the XHTML code being 1 both this and the note at the bottom of the page are encoded as Footnote here. This is rendered by the style sheet as smaller text in red to keep the editorial notes distinct from original text. e.g. Footnote.

Footnotes are numbered consecutively, though independently on each page. This makes the adding or deleting of notes easier.

Manuscripts are transcribed directly into Dreamweaver (DW) using the Design view. This automatically encodes the transcriptions correctly such that setting some given text as italic will generate the correct tag DW should be configured to use the UTF-8 character set and to generate XHTML files by default. Associate editors or other volunteer contributors may not have access to DW and may use another html editor or even Microsoft Word which can save files as HTML though this will require conversion and cleaning up later. For special characters, please refer to: Character Entity References in XHTML 1

A standard metadata record is included with each document. The following is an example:

RECORD: Recollections of Charles Darwin's death by Henrietta Litchfield. CUL-DAR262.23.2

REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed from the manuscript by Kees Rookmaaker 12.2005; checked against the manuscript by Janet Browne 3.2006.

NOTE: Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin.

TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS

[some text] 'some text' is an editorial insertion
[some text] 'some text' is the conjectured reading of an ambiguous word or passage
[some text] 'some text' is a description of a word or passage that cannot be transcribed, e.g, 3 words illeg
< > word(s) destroyed
<some text> 'some text' is a description of a destroyed word or passage, e.g., 3 lines excised

John van Wyhe

January 2006

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File last updated 14 November, 2008