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Notes
In the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century the semicolon, at least, is frequently found inside the quotation mark, and this usage may appear in older-fashioned American writers; curiously, it is also the present typographical practice of The New Yorker magazine.
There is no point in nitpicking in this matter. For instance, in American usage a comma inside quotation marks following an italicized word in a roman sentence should be in roman (like the quotes) if roman text follows, regardless of whether in the actual source quotation the word and its comma were abstracted from an italic sentence with an italic comma. I should take it that British usage would be the same in this situation.
It goes without saying that a transcriber should never create such problems for his modern printer but should have transcripts typed so that no word is broken at the end of a line, least of all possible hyphenated compounds. If the typist has slipped, the copy for the printer must be marked to make certain that the printer sets the word as intended and not according to his own notions of styling. An editor needs to take account of such compounds in his preparation of the copy for an apparatus and to mark copy for true hyphenation to warn the printer not to break these; moreover, when the printer in the apparatus breaks words, the proofs must be marked to rearrange any line that contains an ambiguous word hyphenated at the end of the line, else the reader will never know its correct form.
A diplomatic transcript in a reading text would not ordinarily mark the line-endings of the original document.
The text of the 1860 Whitman Leaves of Grass manuscript seemed to be of this special nature, and so the alterations appear at the foot of the page. Of course, it is much cheaper to have them grouped at the back of the volume.
The editor's typescript apparatus is most conveniently keyed to the page-lines of his typescript of the manuscript text and can thus be prepared at the same time. Convenience and economy then suggest that the text be set directly into page proof whenever practicable so that the edition's final page-line references can be substituted by hand in the apparatus before it is sent to the printer with the marked proofs of the text. Ordinarily enough difficulty exists in typesetting apparatus to justify its being set initially in galley proof and not paged until the first revises are called for. Any relining of page proofs in the revise stage needs special attention in connection with proof-correction and may require alteration in the galley proof of the page-line numbers of the apparatus if they have been keyed to the unrevised page proofs.
Ordinarily, differences in the accidental form of a repeated substantive are sufficient for identification in the lemma without superscript figures. Thus is and Is in the same line need no artificial distinction. More subject to mistake by a reader might be two words differentiated only by following punctuation and no punctuation, but even so a lemma with punctuation should indicate the reading clearly enough; indeed, to employ superscript figures for such variant readings would be anomalous and sometimes ambiguous.
In this case a relatively easy alternative without unduly lengthening the description is to add to the entry the information about the MS variant, thus removing the need for the dagger: 155.7-8 But . . . say] above deleted 'But before saying'; 'your intent' follows deleted 'you' and deleted 'that is'; MS reads 'so,'.
Unlike the example in footnote 8 above, in this case a note about the isolated variant takes up excessive space if to the entry one were to add the information: MS reads 'means' for 'is.' If one condensed, the result is not altogether clear: MS reads 'means'.
Of course, the Historical Collation will always need to be consulted for a record of manuscript variants from the edited book-text which are not themselves an alteration or do not come within the range of an alteration specified in the lemma.
Actually, the lower-case MS likewise probably represents not an old-fashioned use (although James did sometimes write a series of questions in this manner) but instead an insertion of likewise and a failure to capitalize it when, probably at a later time, And was deleted.
Simple guidelines or guidelines with carets may be subsumed under the head of carets except for transpositions (and possibly insertions at a distance) that move text from its original position.
Alternate forms without description for naturally formed by ly added or natural formed by ly deleted would be: naturally ] altered from 'natural' (and) natural ] alt. fr. 'naturally'.
Since the text has not been changed in this example, it might be supposed that a record is unnecessary. But, in fact, alterations of this kind usually indicate some change of mind that was then reversed and hence are as important to record as any other alteration.
The circumstances make it perfectly clear that the comma must have been written, or inserted, after the deletion of the period; hence no need exists to write: comma inserted after deleted period.
Any different medium, proof of later revision, should always be mentioned: be in] added in pencil before deleted interlined 'the truth of'. If the editor is unable to determine the facts from apparently neutral evidence, he has no option but to let the literal description stand, as in the second entry.
In this entry a lengthy description seems necessary to sort out and relate the facts. The mention of the caret may be justified by the description of the guideline; but, actually, neither is required, and the preferred description could read: first intrl. aft. 'us', then moved to precede 'assumes', and then del.
If the manuscript itself were being transcribed diplomatically as the sole edited text, powerful arguments could be advanced that all slips should be recorded. This would indeed be the correct position. The exclusions suggested here are based on the assumption either that the manuscript is being critically edited in a reading text or else that some other document is the copy-text and the manuscript whose variants are being recorded in the apparatus is a secondary document to it.
As a part of space saving without abbreviation an editor may choose to adopt the British use of query for question mark, with a general note to that effect for the benefit of American readers. It is also shorter to use the colloquial quotes instead of quotation marks; moreover, quotes may even be abbreviated to qts.
This entry illustrates a small but useful point. Ordinarily semicolons in the description separate independent units, but in this case there is only one unit—the alteration of What—and thus a comma separating the two parts is clearer than an ambiguous semicolon.
When a bracketed description applies to a word but not to its following punctuation, the punctuation should come after the bracket. If in this case clearness and its comma had been interlined, the text would have read with the comma before the bracket: *clearness, [intrl.]. Similarly, if a word is deleted but not its following comma, which thus remains to apply to the interlined substitute, one would read: *sentiment [ab. del. 'sensibility'], then. But, if the comma had been deleted as well and the interlineation followed by a comma: *sentiment, [ab. del. 'sensibility,'] then.
The construction of this formula requires and one to be inserted before deleted one as a part of the interlineation. In the earlier entry for 146.9-10, MS reads 'quite a new proposition,' was put in parentheses because it gave the final reading as a preliminary to the subsequent description of alterations. In the present entry, however, the parentheses are not needed since the situation changes: the alterations, being simple, can be listed as an integral part of the MS reading which forms the description.
Empty square brackets mean an illegible word or series of letters; letters that can be conjecturally read are spaced inside the brackets: c[o t min t n]. Pointed empty brackets indicate where the text has been removed by a piece of the manuscript having been torn off, crumbled away, or cut out. Any letters associated with the text about the defacement are transcribed, as co< >. If, for example, the tops or feet of letters of some portion were present so that some might be conjecturally reconstructed with confidence, they would be noted within the pointed brackets: co<nt ti >. Instead of empty square brackets one can, of course, write [illegible].
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