I transcribed Manuscript H. I had a little difficulty with the handwriting, but once I got used to the quirks of the author's older style penmanship (and realized that the weird "G"-ish symbol meant "and"), the text became a lot easier to read.
Perhaps because Manuscript H is a personal letter, and the author was possibly less concerned with precise wording, there were no obvious cross-outs or revisions. Since I did not need to be concerned with which version of the text to maintain, I was left with questions of spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. I decided to maintain the author's punctuation and capitalization, but normalize the spelling. I felt that maintaining the non-standard punctuation also maintained the personal "flow" of the letter. Maintaining the non-standard spelling would have "interrupted" a modern reader's reading of the text by requiring them to translate from the older (or perhaps just incorrect) spelling. I did note those spellings in footnotes, however, for readers interested in historical spellings.
Rose,
ReplyDeleteYour transcription is clear, and it is easy to follow the changes you made through your notation style. I am impressed by your ability to decipher some of the handwriting that I found to be difficult to read (mostly due to ink splotches) such as the phrases "trifling Letter" and "your Cousin" in the last lines. I am wondering about your decision to keep the antiquated verb form "chidden" because you claim to standardize (although this does not mean modernize) spelling. According to the NGram creators "chide" went from an irregular to a regular verb faster than any other verb in the English language. This indicates that the form of the verb "chidden" was possibly only in use for a short time. Just a random note for your consideration.
Well done,
Amanda
Amanda,
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting about "chide." I actually wavered back and forth on "chidden" for a while, and eventually decided to include it for the very un-scientific reason that maintaining an old verb form felt different than maintaining older spellings. For some reason, changing the actual word (even though it means the same thing) seemed more intrusive than changing the appearance of words. Which, of course, goes to show you that many of these decisions are subjective on the part of the transcriber.
Rose