Documentary Editing Example
Letter from Thomas Stanton to John Mason, 8 July 1669, Norwich, Connecticut Colony (Courtesy of the Connecticut State Library).
Researchers interested in New England Native American documents, especially those materials from the 17th and early 18th century, face a number of difficulties: restricted access; fragile, worn or torn pages; and illegible or outdated handwriting styles. The Yale Indian Papers Project will remedy these problems by providing researchers with a digitized image of the original document, two levels of transcription, annotation, and in some instances scholarly comment on various topics raised within the document or within a series of related materials.
Where handwriting or the condition of the document makes it difficult to read, the two levels of transcription are intended to meet the scholarly needs of the researcher. For those advanced scholars who prefer working with the original form of a document, the Yale Indian Papers Project will provide a scholars’ transcription that corresponds in every detail possible to the manuscript. Words are set down exactly as they are found line by line, with misspellings, variant forms, antiquated usage, cross outs, and insertions. For those researchers who would rather read the document merely for its information or on a casual basis, the Project offers an annotated transcription that modernizes and regularizes the text and includes detailed annotation. Annotations appear as hyperlinks, represented here as blue underlined text. Moreover in certain instances a brief commentary, written cooperatively by recognized scholars in the field with backgrounds in history, law, race relations, and environment and by regional Native tribal members, will accompany the annotations.
