Transcribing and Editing the Text

xml version || id: taggingtext|| subsections || post a comment || test this page

Release or development version: r-5

The creation of epigraphic texts using XML is greatly facilitated by the traditional, scholarly techniques of editing epigraphic texts. Epigraphers are already accustomed to careful examination, analysis and description of letters, words, phrases and other aspects of texts. Communicating these aspects accurately and unambiguously is the central aim of scholarly epigraphic publication, and epigraphers have developed a highly technical and effective typographic vocabulary for achieving it (see further: " Introduction for Epigraphers"). Our goal in developing the guidelines in this section has been to render structurally distinct the semantic richness and rigor underlying the typographic vocabulary to permit computer software to distinguish all its elements reliably. This arrangement permits the use of xml-aware software to increase scholarly productivity and reduce the manual tasks that slow scholarly inquiry.

The use of sigla in traditional typographic editions that either bind to individual characters or that encompass a group of characters pair-wise provides a ready-made road map to the enumeration and application of XML tags. In formulating these recommendations, we have endeavored to provide unique combinations of elements and attributes for each and every distinction epigraphers attempt to draw with sigla in print editions. These element-attribute combinations are described in the following sections, arranged by broad classes of editorial activity.

Note that this section focuses exclusively on the transcription and editing of the inscribed text, i.e., the specific activities in which an epigraphist engages to constitute a text and associated apparatus. Other aspects of epigraphic editions, reports and corpora are presented elsewhere in these Guidelines (please see the Table of Contents or Organization of the Guidelines: where to go from here).

Subsections

• Lines, sections and references to them
  • Lines
  • Units of the text (fragments, columns, sections)
• Transcription of characters and sigla on the stone
  • Transcription with no problems
  • Transcription with no uncertainty about the form of the character(s), but the editor prefers not to resolve them.
  • Transcription wherein the character would not be unambiguous outside its context
  • Transcription wherein vestiges of characters remain, but they cannot be recognized (extent certain or nearly so)
  • Transcription where letters are completely lost
    • Letters completely lost (extent certain or not certain)
    • Letters completely lost (extent less certain due to variation in the size of surviving characters)
    • An entire line completely lost (extent certain or uncertain)
    • Possibility that letters have been completely lost
  • Letters read by a previous modern observer, but which cannot now be read
  • Transcription where a vacat is evident or suspected
• Addition and deletion in antiquity
  • Addition of text in antiquity
  • Deletion of text in antiquity
  • Deletion and overstruck addition of text in antiquity
• Characters and sigla: form and appearance
  • Vowels carrying apices
  • Letters and numerals highlighted by supralinear lines
  • Letters and numerals highlighted by intralinear lines
  • Letters joined (ligature)
  • Reversed letters
  • Special Characters
    • Acrophonic numerals
    • Chi-Rho (☧)
    • Claudian letters
    • Interpuncts
  • "I longa"
  • Tall characters
  • Small characters
  • Characters inscribed above or below the line, but clearly not later additions
  • Indication of the direction of script (e.g. right-to-left)
  • Vowel Quantity
• Editorial supplements, observations and hypotheses
  • Identification and expansion of abbreviations understood by the editor
  • Identification of abbreviations not understood by the editor
  • Editorial supplement in which the editor makes a "subaudible" word manifest
  • Editorial supplement in which the editor explains a "breviatio" or note
  • Editorial supplement for characters wholly lost
  • Letters omitted because the stonecutter did not carry out the text to the end
• Editorial corrections
  • Letters erroneously included in the text, which the editor suppresses
  • Letters erroneously omitted from the text, which the editor adds
  • Letters erroneously substituted or incorrectly executed in the text, which the editor corrects
• Other editorial actions
  • Word or words omitted for the sake of brevity or emphasis by the editor while discussing or quoting a text
• Critical apparatus