[DCRM-L] Question about Tironian notes in DCRM(B)

Fri Aug 19 10:08:10 MDT 2011

There were a number of difficulties with that instruction for printed books, which I suspected stemmed from a confusion of ampersand and tironian signs. Not available to us at the time, there is a cool wikipedia article on the ampersand, which confirms my conclusion:

The ampersand should not be confused with the Tironian "et" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes>  (“⁊”), which is a symbol similar to the numeral 7. Both symbols have their roots in the classical antiquity, and both signs were used up through the Middle Ages as a representation for the Latin word "et" ("and"). However, while the ampersand was in origin a common ligature in the everyday script, the Tironian "et" was part of a highly specialised stenographic shorthand <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorthand> .[8] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand#cite_note-7>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand 

If we can verify the information in the wikipedia paragraph, i.e., that one can only properly call the 7-shaped symbol a tironian et when it was used with other Tironian signs in a document, we may want to reconsider 0G8.2 when we revise DCRM(B). I don't think I've ever seen actual Tironian signs (i.e., the systematic shorthand) in a printed book. Have any of you?

Deborah J. Leslie, M.A., M.L.S. | Head of Cataloging, Folger Shakespeare Library | 201 East Capitol St., S.E. | Washington, D.C. 20003
djleslie at folger.edu <mailto:djleslie at folger.edu>  | 202.675-0369 | http://www.folger.edu <http://www.folger.edu/>  

From: dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu [mailto:dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu] On Behalf Of Manon Theroux
Sent: Thursday, 18 August, 2011 19:44
To: DCRM Revision Group List
Subject: Re: [DCRM-L] Question about tironian notes in DCRM(B)

Hi, Jenny-

This page has links to the discussion papers from the DCRM Conference, held 10-13 March, 2003, at Yale University:
http://www.rbms.info/committees/bibliographic_standards/dcrm/dcrmtext.html

If you scroll down to the Conference section, look under Working Group 2, and click to open "Transcription Issues 1" (a discussion paper written by Deborah J. Leslie & Benjamin Griffin), you'll find the following on  p. 18:

===
4.1. Tironian sign. The Gothic font’s “tironian sign” should be transcribed as an ampersand, since it is the black-letter analogue for what appears as an ampersand in roman type. Both are derived from MS. contractions of Latin “et”. (This was the decision arrived at by the Bibliographic Standards Committee at the ALA annual meeting in 1999).
===

Unfortunately, I don't find anything about the Tironian sign in the BSC minutes from 1999. The closest thing I could find there was: "Treat an ampersand as an ampersand."

-Manon

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 7:26 PM, <jnelson at law.berkeley.edu> wrote:

Dear DCRM-Listers,
I was asked the below question by someone from the Latin for Catalogers workshop. Since it is a little out of my purview and expertise, I thought I would put it to this group.
Best regards,
Jenny

Question:

"...In DCRB, catalogers were instructed to transcribe the Tironian sign for "et" as "[et]" if they were unable to reproduce it.  DCRMB 0G8.2 says to transcribe a Tironian sign as an ampersand without brackets. When DCRMB was published, I didn't understand the reason for this change, and I still don't. To me it seems better to transcribe a Trionian sign as '[et]' because it is from a special shorthand system and the ampersand was created from the ligature of the word 'et' ... do you have any insight into this rule change?"

-- 
Jennifer K. Nelson
Reference Librarian
The Robbins Collection
UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall)
Berkeley, CA 94720
jnelson at law.berkeley.edu

Tel: 510.643.9709
Fax: 510.642.8325
www.law.berkeley.edu/library/robbins/

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