Just to add one more voice, perhaps superfluously:

Please, enjoin your volunteer to transcribe these documents with
absolute fidelity.

They will otherwise be useless to scholarship, or indeed to any
accurate historical understanding.

--Jurretta Heckscher



On Oct 24, 2006, at 3:20 PM, Levy, Suzanne S. wrote:

> 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/
>
> [log in to unmask]

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