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Transcription
Transcription the the Westmorland chapter from The Agreeable
Historian or Compleat English Traveller, by Samuel Simpson,
published by R Walker, Fleet Street, London, 1746. The text pages
used are in the Wordworth Trust Collection, item
GRMDC:2007.38.60.
source type: Simpson 1746
The page size is: wxh, page = 11x16.5cm.
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Westmorland |
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Transcription of the Cumberland chapter has been made from a
copy of volume 1 of The Agreeable Historian in the National
Library of Scotland, Map Room.
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Cumberland |
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Notes
Volume 3 includes counties from N - Norfolk to Y - Yorkshire.
The list on the title page omits Westmorland, but the text
transcribed here has the catchword 'Wiltshire' at the end of its
last page, and is surely from this volume.
Samuel Simpson declares his sources; William Camden, John
Leland, Thomas Dugdale, John Ogilby, Mr Morgan, and others. In
reading, the text feels as if it had been assembled by cut and
paste in a word processor! grabbing bits of text, but never
melding them properly.
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Transcription and Indexing
Transcription and indexing follow the pattern used for West
1778, and Otley 1823, in the Lakes Guides project. Misspellings
have been retained as carefully as possible. Marginals are added;
they are not in the original text.
A catchword at the end of each page is transcribed.
Italics in this text have been marked with the HTML tags,
MODES does not use these but when downloaded to html pages they
will operate correctly. This has NOT been done in earlier
transcriptions in the Lakes Guides project.
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The Editing Process
This note might be boring, skip it if you wish.
Transcribe the whole text into a MODES Format to handle text
(WORDS Format: at a later stage of the project an xml structure
based on the TEI should be used). This is done in word processor
software (Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS is still being used for its
excellent macro facilties). The transcript is made page by page,
each to be a separate MODES record. The wordprocessor file is a
MODES .tag file called SMP3TXT.tag.
For some transcriptions the spell checker could be used at
this stage, in the wordprocessor. MODES has no spell checker. The
spelling in early texts is so irregular that this can be more of
a nuisance than a help, and was ommitted for this text.
Load into MODES for Windows; the procedure checks the
structure of the records.
Printout the records, and use these to proof read the
transcription. Also: mark up the text with marginal notes, which
will build a synopsis of the text, and mark up the text with
keywords for each page.
Go back to the WP version of the transcription to make
corrections. And now add marginal notes the help the reader
follow the text, and to be used later for a contents list, a
synopsis of the text.
Record keywords for each page, for indexing. This is done by
copying the whole page text into a KEYWORDS field and then
editing this into MODES style keywords, controlling terminology
as necessary. The text spelling of places is retained, but at the
same time the present day placenames are added, and places
referred to indirectly 'the church ...' are identified and a more
formal keyword added. The keyword lists are sorted into
alphabetical order, using a WP macro, to aid checking.
Keywords are made for placenames as given in the text, and for
the same place using its 'correct' placename as used in the Old
Cumbria Gazetteer. Two entries might be made on the pattern:-
[correct placename]
[text placename] ([correct placename)]
eg:-
Ill Bell
Hill Bell (Ill Bell)
Where the two entries look to be too much of a good thing,
common sense is used and the non-standard term is ommited.
Every time the text is edited you might spot errors of typing.
But: beware of correcting spelling mistakes, check the original
to see whether they are original, or your typos. Odd spellings
are expected and accepted; (sic) is used sparingly and only where
really necessary.
At this stage the transcript is loaded again into MODES,
overwriting the previous records. The word processor (.tag) file
is no longer the master version and edits from here on are made
in MODES. But: keep the .tag file for another process; it is
renamed SMP3GAZ.tag to guard against misuse.
The last step is to mine the text for quotable material to be
attached, in Evidence groups, to places in the Old Cumbria
Gazetteer. Where a match to an existing place cannot be made a
new place record is made, giving this text as the source of its
Identification. This process is sometimes uncertain. Identified
places will show in the display of the relevant text page/s.
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