The Letters of Robert Bloomfield - Editorial Principles and Conventions
In the same spirit of faithfulness to Bloomfield's text as we try to show towards his context, we have preserved the original spelling, grammar and layout of his letters as far as is possible. Readers will notice his sporadic use of capital letters, his frequent adoption of the comma instead of the full stop, his sometimes unorthodox spelling. Only where the original is likely to cause present-day readers confusion have we inserted, in square brackets, an editorial comment clarifying matters. Bloomfield's own annotations, corrections and glosses added to the text of his letters, are indicated by an asterisk and placed at the end of the relevant letter. Editors' interventions are indicated in two ways—by square brackets, and by highlighting: notes, for instance, appear as numerals in square brackets linked to a note-text at the end of each letter; names of people, places and texts are highlighted to indicate hyperlinks to files of biographies, locations and texts. Correspondent, date, and the current archival location of the letter manuscript, are given in a brief headnote at the beginning of each letter. Addresses and postmarks are listed where these have survived.
The editors have used the following conventions in transcribing the manuscript letters:
Spelling and punctuation: the transcriptions preserve the spelling and punctuation found in the manuscript originals. Where this is likely to cause the present-day reader confusion, the editors have provided a clarificatory note.
[ ] = editorial intervention/note
< > = insertion above the line
deletions are indicated by striking-through: e.g. the
an x is used to indicate 1 illegible character (deleted or undeleted): eg. xxxx or xxxx
underlining is indicated by italics
the extent of underlining/scoring out is not indicated
unless otherwise noted, all glosses and annotations are Bloomfield's own.