Principles of transcription

1. Maintain the original writing - transcribe as faithfully as possible without correcting mistakes made by the writer.
    
2. Lines of text - the text should be transcribed in the original lines. If a word is divided between two lines, enter the word on both lines as in the original i.e. do not combine it.
    
3. Punctuation - all punctuation (e.g. commas, full stops, hyphens, etc.) appearing in the original should be omitted.
    
4. Use of capital letters - the programme does not distinguish between lowercase and uppercase letters and treats both as correct.
    
5. Letters with diacritics - diacritics should be omitted in the transcription, e.g. ü should be written as u.
    
6. Abbreviations - our general rule of transcription is that the abbreviation used by the writer should be expanded, giving the full word. In this document there is one abbreviation, if you have difficulty transcribing it, use the Abbreviation.

 

You can read the full transcription rules here.

Helpful tips

1. The text is written in a hasty, cursive script, which means that there are letters written carelessly (e.g. the letter e at the end of some words).
    
2. The writer used two different ways to write the letter s.
    
3. The letter r can easily be confused with v or w. In case of difficulty, see the Model letters.
    
4. Please note that the writer has written some words using Latin script, which are different from the rest of the text.
    
5. There is one abbreviation in the document, if you have difficulty reading it, refer to the help section in Abbreviations.

 

You can find more tips to help you transcribe old texts here.

Exercise 29

Model letters

Exercise 29

Abbreviations