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My Rules for Transcriptions
- Always preserve the semantics of what is written/typed. If the text is factually incorrect, I nevertheless remain faithful to the author's words.
- Brackets (i.e., [ … ]): I use brackets to denote anything that is not in the original text. I have very rarely found brackets in use in handwritten text.
- [sic]: I will use sic to denote when an error is the author's, not mine. Sometimes, I will include the correction (e.g., “… pson [person] …”).
- Dates: Dates are written in a variety of ways, to include numbers written as words. I strive to always follow the date as written with a standardized Gregorian Calendar date (e.g., “the Tenth Day of aprill 1684 [10 Apr 1684]”).
- I never introduce new content (except when contained within brackets, as described above).
- “Long” s (i.e., the ſ character): In some early typesets, the long s character was sometimes used. I simply replace it with a lowercase 's'. Some transcribers use the lowercase 'f', but that is grammatically and syntactically incorrect.
- Line spacing.