 | Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography |  |
TRANSCRIPTION
The first part of my "Title-Page Transcription and Signature Colla-
tion
Reconsidered" (Studies in Bibliography, 38 [1985],
45–81) explained
why title-page transcriptions are not superseded by photographic
repro-
ductions and indeed why quasi-facsimile transcription is a form of
quoting
that is appropriate for dealing with other parts of books besides title
pages,
whether or not they also happen to be reproduced. Quasi-facsimile
tran-
scription differs only slightly in any case from ordinary quoting
(primarily
by noting line-ends), and it can helpfully be employed, for example,
in
quoting copyright notices, printers' imprints, and section- or head-titles
not only gives more information than ordinary quoting about the physical
presentation of the text but also can promote the discovery of variants by
providing more text for comparison. Bowers's treatment of the contents
paragraph—which recognizes alternative approaches that produce more
compressed listings, not always involving quotation at all—is in line with
my general view that different levels of detail are appropriate on differ-
ent occasions (see "Tolerances" above). Nevertheless, my 1985 comments
show why quasi-facsimile quoting is strongly to be preferred.
The point about the complementary relationship between transcrip-
tions and
photographs applies of course to any form of reproduction, and
therefore it can now
be extended to digital images (regardless of their
quality or the fact that they can
easily be magnified). My 1985 piece al-
luded briefly to the
limitations of all reproductions, and four years later
I published a detailed
examination of this matter in "Reproductions and
Scholarship" (Studies in Bibliography, 52 [1989], 25–54).
B. J. McMullin, in his 1999 review of the Todd-Bowden Scott bibli-
ography (Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin, 23:
78–106), made a useful suggestion (pp.
85–86) regarding the printing
of quasi-facsimile transcriptions of title pages: that
they not be set with
justified right margins, so that no line-end hyphens would
intrude into
the transcription. Indeed, one could extend it further—to any
quota-
tion, whether in quasi-facsimile or not. (To say this is to raise the
whole
question of line-end hyphens, for the point applies to the
bibliographer's
own prose as well as quotations from the books being described. In
many
scholarly editions, there is a list of those line-end hyphens in the
edited
text that should be retained in quotations; but it is not realistic to
expect
that this practice might ever be extended to all books, though it
would
be logical to do so.)
One other refinement in quasi-facsimile transcriptions should be re-
ported here,
since my reference to it in my 1985 essay could well be over-
looked
(at the end of note 26): David L. Vander Meulen's practice, in
his
Dunciad bibliography (1981 dissertation),
of citing the type-face measure-
ments of the type faces used on each title page.
Measuring to the nearest
third of a millimeter, he reports full height (with
ascenders and descend-
ers), capital height, and x-height, placing whichever
measurements apply
to a given line in brackets at the end of the line. When more
than one
apply, they are given in the above order, without further labeling;
and
when the same measurements apply to more than one consecutive line,
the
report comes at the end of those lines. This approach can obviously
be extended to
any other instances of quasi-facsimile transcription that
involve typographic layout
not covered in the paragraph on typography
(where many recurrent features, such as
the type faces used in the body
described). Anything that increases the visual information conveyed by
quasi-facsimile transcription is to be embraced.
| Notes on Recent Work in
Descriptive Bibliography | |