Editorial Guidelines

The texts of Erek – digital consist basically of two layers: the transcription of the manuscript, and the editorial treatment, including normalisations, corrections and punctuation.

The Transcriptions

• All characters are transcribed as accurately as possible. This applies not only to letters, but also to (rare) handwritten punctuation, rhyme points, bounding lines, collation marks, runover marks, separators, insertion or transposition marks.
• Elements which definitely have no relevance for the text are not encoded. This includes material damage, as long it does not cause any loss of text, decorations outside of the ruling lines, pen trials etc. In case of doubt, the element is described in a note.
• Additional texts, such as scribal title, or closing formulas, are recorded, and encoded as such.
• Alignment, page change and column change in the manuscript are tagged to enable exact correspondence of text and image.
• Verse counting is based on the edition by Albert Leitzmann, Ludwig Wolff and Kurt Gärtner, which is an accepted authority. Corresponding verses can thus be synchronised in the synopsis. In addition, we keep an alternative numbering of lines following the manuscript.
• Gaps are only indicated where (later) material damage has led to loss of text, not where verses of Leitzmann's text are missing. In the transcription, the number of lost characters or lines is noted as accurately as possible.
• ›Older‹, i.e. medieval or early modern corrections (deletions, insertions, substitutions or conversions) are transcribed. Later, modern changes will be commented on where necessary. Complex correction phenomena that cannot be adequately represented in the coding are commented on.
• Where text is not clearly legible it will be transcribed, if possible, but any uncertainty will be noted in the code.
• We reproduce the word separation of the manuscript. Where it is not possible to decide objectively whether a word as a blank space or not, the transcription will follow the most frequent use of that manuscript.
• In the transcription, the text is tokenized, i.e., each word is tagged separately following linguistic criteria. In the manuscripts, some words are written together; they are encoded as separate tokens, but the blank space between them is erased. Conversely, sequences of letters that linguistically belong together, but have been handed down containing one or more blank spaces, are tagged as a single token.
• Letters of the Latin alphabet are always standardised according to modern conventions. For example, no distinction is made between the various handwritten forms of d, i, r, s. Ausgenommen davon ist lediglich das Schaft-s <ſ>, The only exception to this is the long-s <ſ>, because its similarity to f has historically caused it to be misread or incorrectly written.
• Upper and lower case will be retained. Where necessary, it will be decided on a manuscript-by-manuscript basis as to what is to be considered as upper or lower case (especially in littera bastarda codices). Upper case would be expected to use different pen strokes compared with lower case.
• Litterae notabiliores are letters that are emphasised, usually at the beginning of a verse; these can be initials or capitals that are moved out to the left or verse beginnings that are rubricated in red. They are always rendered with a majuscule, even if the letter has the form of a (possibly enlarged) minuscule. The encoding records the type of highlighting. Even in manuscripts without highlighting of verse beginnings, but which regularly use majuscules, we record graphemes at the beginning of verses which have the form of minuscules as majuscules
• We distinguish between i and j (as well as y) if a manuscript shows clear tendencies towards a graphematic distinction (usually in the case of textura manuscripts).
• We distinguish between i and j or u and v if a manuscript shows clear tendencies towards a graphematic distinction (usually in the case of textura manuscripts).
• Superscripts are precisely transcribed (e.g., superscripts, umlauts, accents, etc.).
• Diacritics appear above or below the sound to which they refer. Horizontal shifts, which occur frequently in the more recent paper manuscripts are therefore not depicted.
• Abbreviations are recorded as such and their resolution is encoded at the same time, so the user can choose between abbreviation and resolution for text output.