ReadMe

HOW TO USE THE ‘READ ME!’ TOOL

In each of the early weeks of the module we will provide an online extract from one of the documents seen in class with a self-assessment tool, so that you can practise your palaeography. The method you use to tackle these exercises will introduce the principles needed to prepare your assignments.

For the ‘Read Me’ exercises:

• Read the headnotes to each document since these are provided to help you. These will point out particular features of the hand, such as the use of colour, underlining, layout etc., or specific issues of scribal practice such as unusual characters, letter forms, otiose (lazy or meaningless) strokes, or peculiarities of punctuation. Such elements would normally be discussed within the description of the hand in the introduction to an assignment.

• Replicate lines as they appear in the document

• Replicate word-division as it is used in the document

• Replicate spelling as it is used in the document, bearing in mind that it may seem odd and may vary

• Reproduce capitalisation and punctuation as they are used in the document

• Retain abbreviations without expansion only if they are still in common modern usage – e.g. Mr, St, &. All other abbreviations, contractions and suspensions should be expanded editorially with the omitted letters placed in [ ] e.g. Ma^tie = Ma[jes]tie.

• Formatting such as enlarged, superscripted and underlined letters should be transcribed plainly.

• Transcribe letters whose usage is often interchangeable (e.g. i/j; u/v/w) as they appear in the document

• Do not attempt to translate unfamiliar words.