Owners of original letters and diaries should at some time consider
donating them to a research library where they can be permanently
preserved, or at least allowing archival-quality copies to be made for
future research use.

The question of transcription policy depends on what the owner wishes to
do with the transcription. It is difficult these days to justify any
policy other than verbatim et literatim if publication is the objective.
Editors and owners of documents are not responsible for what authors of
documents wrote, and nobody should take offense. If the writer's
orthography, spelling, grammar, or usage require explanations to assit
readers, those can easily be supplied in editorial notes.

I recommend consulting the second edition of Mary-Jo Kline's Guide to
Documentary Editing (1998) and Michael Stevens and Steven Burg's Editing
Historical Documents: A Handbook of Practice, published about the same
time. There are experienced documentary editors around who would
doubtless be willing to offer practical advice after consultation with
the owner and a view of the manuscript.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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Visit the Library of Virginia's web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us 

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Levy, Suzanne S.
Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 3:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Transcribing Civil War Diaries

ONe of my volunteers owns a family Civil War Diary and 80 letters from
the diarist to his wife. Her question is in transcribing how do you deal
with punctuation, spelling errors, grammar, etc.? His vocabulary, but
his spelling and grammar are atrocious. He has also made rare derogatory
remarks about companions and superiors and she has been advised against
including full text of those remarks.
 
She has checked Turabian and Chicago Manual of Style for ideas but they
weren't helpful. A google search has also not been very productive.
 
Can anyone recommend any guidelines or offer suggestions on how best to
approach this. She is leaning toward transcribing them as written but
wants to make them understandable.
 
Any information and ideas would be most welcome. I thank you.
 
Suzanne S. Levy, Virginia Room Librarian Fairfax City Regional Library
3915 Chain Bridge Road
Fairfax VA 22030
703-293-6383
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/library/branches/vr/
 
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