ENTranscribing
• Transcribe what you see, don’t get too hung up on formatting. • Preserve line breaks by hitting "return/enter" twice. When in doubt, add a blank line! • Use [ALL CAPS IN BRACKETS] to indicate supplied information. Abbreviations: • Type the abbreviation as it is in the document, then if you are able, spell out the abbreviation in all capital letters in single square brackets immediately after the abbreviation. Do not spell out directions (NNW). Example: Latt obsd [LATITUDE OBSERVED] 38:50 north steered ESE. Illegible text: • If totally unintelligible, type [???] where the word would be in the text. If you are able to make a guess, use all capital letters in single square brackets with a question mark at the end of it. Example: 2 P.M. hauled the ship for [THE?] stream & anchored. Formatting: • If you come across a long s, type it as an s, not an f. • Don't worry about denoting superscript characters such as 2nd, McDonald, or “Yr”. • Line Breaks: HitEnter to start a new line. Do not replicate line breaks caused by the end the original page. Two returns indicate a new paragraph, whether indicated by a blank line or by indentation in the original.
Punctuation:
• Add periods where appropriate if none are used, but do not add any other punctuation.
• If something is hyphenated because it runs onto a second line, type it as one whole word.
• Preserve the use of symbols/special characters such as & and +.
Spelling:
• Preserve original spelling. If you are able to do so, provide the correct/modern/standardized spelling (particularly for things of research value such as names of people, places, relevant terminology, etc.) in all capital letters surrounded by single square brackets right after the original spelling in the text.
Example: ...let one reef out the mizen [MIZZEN] top sail...
Helpful Documentation
Advanced Markup
Table Encoding
Encoding mathematical and scientific formula with LaTex
