Editorial Declaration

Presentation of the Material

By default, the edited documents are presented in accordance with the conventions followed in The Complete Works of W. H. Auden (1993-2022), edited by Edward Mendelson. Optionally, original text features, such as deletions, can be displayed, and users can modify presentation preferences.

• The default view offers the following features:
  • one view per page recto and verso
  • vertical arrangements of texts that partially represent the original layout
  • different fonts to represent handwriting (Times New Roman), typewriting (Courier New), and print (Arial)
  • reading versions of texts that do not contain deletions, underlines, additional typographic whitespace, or indications of unclear characters
  • italics to represent originally underlined text
  • indications of undecipherable characters (if not deleted)
  • facsimiles displayed through a plugin viewer, with controls to adjust image size

• The following display options are available:
  • original text features: deletions, underlines, additional typographic whitespace
  • indications of unclear characters, which cannot be transcribed with certainty
  • choice of fonts and font sizes
  • full-screen view
  • text-focus view without facsimile

Image Digitization

The documents have been reproduced at 600 dpi and 24 bit/RGB through an Image Access WideTEK®25 color flatbed scanner and saved in an uncompressed TIFF format. Selected materials (images 5 and 6 in https://amp.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/amp-transcript__0039.html, images 3 and 4 in https://amp.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/amp-transcript__0040.html) have been digitized at 603.1 dpi and 24 bit by means of a Phase One XF IQ3 100MP medium-format camera with a Schneider Kreuznach 80mm f/2.8 leaf shutter lens. The high-resolution digital reproductions can be accessed via https://id.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/auden-musulin-papers/facs. On the website, images are provided through IIIF.

Transcription Guidelines

Source transcriptions as encoded in TEI/XML represent the spelling, punctuation, and revisions as they appear, aiming for minimal editorial intervention or interpretation.

1. Spelling
   1. The original spelling in both manuscripts and typescripts is retained, even if irregular.
   2. Characters that cannot be transcribed with certainty are marked up as <unclear> in XML and can be highlighted in grey on the web page.
   3. Handwritten characters are not marked up as <unclear> in XML when they can be identified as a consistent and typical feature of the respective author's handwriting.
   4. Signatures are not marked up as <unclear>.
   5. Characters that cannot be transcribed are marked up as <gap> in XML and represented by means of square brackets on the web page.
   6. Superscripts have not yet been marked up and are not represented on the web page.

1. Numericals
   1. For typescripts, the characters 'I' (uppercase i) and 'O' (uppercase o) designating the numbers 1 and 0 (zero), respectively, are preserved.
   2. For manuscripts, the anglophone variant writing of the numeral 1 is represented by '1'.

1. Punctuation and Spaces
   1. The original punctuation is retained, even if irregular.
   2. Punctuation signs that cannot be transcribed with certainty are rendered by UTF-8/Unicode symbols that represent a graphical approximation, marked up as <unclear> in XML.
   3. For manuscripts, when spaces before or after punctuation marks are significantly smaller than the spaces separating words in the surrounding text, no spaces are transcribed.
   4. For manuscripts, the length of spaces between words is regularized and represented as either single space or no space.
   5. For typescripts, the exact number of spaces within sentences is preserved and marked up as <space> in XML.

1. Original line breaks and divisions between blocks of text are retained.

1. Underline
   1. Underlines are marked up as <hi rend="underline"> and can be graphically represented on the web page.
   2. Underlines are not represented if they form part of signatures.
   3. Underlines in typescripts are rendered precisely and include, for instance, empty spaces before or after words if they are underlined in the source document; transcriptions of underlines in manuscripts ignore underlined spaces before or after words.

1. Characters whose legibility is impaired by smudges and overwritings are marked up as <unclear> in XML and can be represented in grey on the web page.

1. Revisions
   1. Deletions of text are marked up as <del> in XML and can be represented on the web page.
   2. For overwritings in manuscripts and typescripts, we have accepted the orthographically or grammatically accurate versions as corrections, even if the actual sequences of textual layers cannot be reconstructed.
   3. For transcriptions of typescripts - in addition to handwritten deletions - we accept the use of the typed signs 'x', 'm', 'z', '-', and '/' as indicating deletions where such deletion seems plausible.
   4. When additions are inserted into manuscripts or typescripts, surrounding spaces are included in ways that are coherent with the general use of spaces in the respective texts.
   5. When additions replace deleted words in typescripts, they are inserted directly after the deletions without additional spaces in between.
   6. When it is uncertain whether characters have been deleted, the passage in question is marked up as <unclear><del><gap reason="deleted"/><del/><unclear/>.
   7. For typescripts by Musulin, we accept handwritten underlines of deleted passages as cancelled deletions.
   8. Multiple overwritings in the same place of a typescript (when character 'x' is overwritten by character 'y', which, in turn, is overwritten by 'z') are represented as nested deletions: '<del><del>x</del>y</del>z'

1. Pre-printed Components and Postal Additions
   1. Pre-printed letter heads and sender addresses are transcribed.
   2. Image captions in postcards are transcribed.
   3. Postmarks and stamps are not transcribed.
   4. Pre-printed postal texts and images in telegrams and aerograms are not rendered in the transcriptions.