Topic 4. Transcription

[Stephen Tabor]

At 03:03 PM 1/26/99 -0700, Bob Maxwell wrote:
>Underlying 0H is the fact that there ARE no compositorial conventions, at
least not
>universal ones. 

There certainly were conventions, which differed according to period and
nationality and had exceptions; but as Bob maintains, that's not the main
point.

>But given that, how can a user who by definition does
>not have the book in hand even come close to guessing what the convention
>used in that particular book was? Even if he/she actually is aware that we
>transcribe according to 0H?

That's the use of 246's.

Then I wrote:
>>Incidentally, I could probably cite examples of early English revolutionary
>>pamphlets in which the i/j usage is a clue to whether you have the original
>>or a contemporary reprint.
and Bob wrote:
>Yes, but that clue would be lost through the application of 0H, would it not?

No, 0H tells us to transcribe "INIURY" as "iniury" if the printer was still
using i for the consonant. If we instead transcribe it as "injury", we've
fuzzed up this edition with one with title page reading "INJURY", where the
printer has converted to using j's in the text. Such cases exist.


Steve