Phineas Finn Proofread Questions

[Grant Gertsen]

Hello!

I've wrapped up a read of Phineas Finn, and while I've started working on a PR for some simple typos, I had a few questions regarding some other stylistic and editorial changes as I get up to speed on SEMOS. I'm able to tack these onto the PR once I know what to do with them, but if it's easier feel free to change them directly if they end up being pertinent.

Chapter 17 -- Looking at 8.7.4 here, but not sure if it falls under "common contractions." It's written in a letter in this context, if that makes a difference:

for, and ’d sooner -> for, and’d sooner

Chapter 17, 32, and 45 (twice) -- From 8.6, I thought that this would lose the ligature. However, I see both variants in the corpus:

Phœbus -> Phoebus

Chapter 39 and 73 -- I can't say I know enough about Latin to know if removing the ligatures is acceptable or not for the two phrases below. 8.6 seems to indicate that they should be kept in non-English languages if required, but I guess I don't know if it's required or not. "Amantium Iræ" is a chapter title as well, if that matters:

39: spretæ injuria formæ 

73: Amantium Iræ

Chapter 18, 39, 48 -- From 8.2.9.1, I believe these should be italicized as they aren't in Merriam-Webster. It looks like they're all in <span> elements with xml:lang attributes right now, but I think they should be italicized?

18: totus teres atque rotundus

39: spretæ injuria formæ 

48: au désespoir

Chapter 35 -- A possible modernize spelling for "syren" to "siren"? I checked Merriam-Webster and they say that "syren" is a British variant, but when checking Ngram it seems to have fallen out of fashion. I wasn't sure if this was enough to change it (it occurs a handful of times elsewhere in the corpus), but figured I would ask.

the syren’s answer to him⁠ -> the siren’s answer to him

Chapter 46 -- There's a letter here that is stylized as a letter within the scans (letters have the extra line break after the previous paragraph and before the next paragraph), but not in the ebook. The tricky part for me is the "he had commenced," narration at the start of the letter, as while it's within the blockquote, it's not actually part of the letter itself. I wasn't sure how to handle this, but I figured I'd see if there was a standard way.

I've attached screenshots of how it looks in the scans, as well as how it looks in the ebook currently.

Thanks for any help with these!

[Vince]

Hard to tell from the very short context, but the “and ‘d” looks like it’s an elision for “and I’d”, so I would think the ‘d should stay separate. Kind of link ’n, etc.

As I discovered this weekend, we have a lot of ligatures in the corpus that shouldn’t be there, according to SEMoS. A LOT. :) We don’t (or aren’t supposed to) keep Latin ligatures, to the best of my understanding.

The three phrases non-English phrases should definitely be italicized/semanticated (and the ligatures removed).

We generally leave British spelling alone, and we have a number of “syren”s in the corpus, so I would think it should stay. If Alex decides to change it, it will have to be changed corpus-wide.

Re the letter, there’s been some brief discussion on the list in the past about blockquotes like that, i.e. with an intro of some sort that’s not actually part of the quote. I personally make them blockquotes, but I don’t know that everyone does. However, in this case, since it’s a letter, and everything, including the signature, is formatted as a letter, then IMO it should be in a blockquote. Which also means that the various pieces should be semanticated, i.e. the salutation, valediction, and signature, and the signature should be in a footer.

<PF_Letter_Scans.PNG>

[Vince]

Grrr. Kind of like ’n …

[Grant Gertsen]

Thanks Vince! This helps a lot and should get me rolling for now.

[David]

Thanks for your work on this, Grant. It's always disappointing to see how much one has missed in production!!

On ligatures: I'm amazed I missed those — I normally do a global search on all /ae/ and /oe/ ligatures, but must have neglected that in this case.

Re: the letter in ch. 46, I think I got more "bold" about these as I worked through the Pallisers. By the end of the series, certainly, I would have broken out those inset comments from a letter blockquote, always in an [Editorial] commit. If I was going back to *Phineas Finn", I would certainly do that now.

Vince's take on the ch. 17 `and 'd` is exactly mine.

FWIW! Thanks again.

David / Fife, UK