Technical Problems in Transcribing the Manuscript

by Robert Monroe Fleming Jr.

This web page is not finished yet.

In transcribing the manuscript into HTML for use as web pages, a number of technical problems with the manuscript made the manuscript more difficult.

The manuscript was finished in 1975. My father used a typewriter to prepare the manuscript. As was general practice in those days before computers and copiers, he used several sheets of thin paper (called “onion skin”) with a sheet of carbon paper in between each of the sheets of paper. The top sheet would have the actual typing from the typewriter ribbon, and all the other sheets will be carbon copies. The second sheet will be quite clear, but each sheet further from the top will be less clear and not as dark. The last sheet usually is quite blurry and some letters don't even show up. The copy of the manuscript I have are mostly fairly clear copies, but a few seem to be from bottom sheets and are quite difficult to read. I had to guess at some words according to context, and in some cases I had to put a [note in square brackets] indicating that the text was illegible.

My father spent a lot of time and effort on the research for this manuscript, and undoubtedly a lot of time typing it, especially since he was not a skilled typist. But also because he was not a skilled typist, he did not follow some basic rules that a skilled typist would have followed. For one thing a skilled typist would have used a small letter “L” for the number one, since very few typewriters had a number one and the lower case &ld1quo;L” on typewriters looked enough like a one that it could be used for that purpose. My father obviously was unaware of this, and used a capital letter “I” It’s obviously he didn’t know better because he had to shift each time he wanted a one and the regular method does not require shifting. This was a minor problem for me. Computer keyboards do have a one, so I used that. The only problem I had a couple of time was, “Does II mean eleven or the Roman Numeral two?” Not knowing which, I transcribed it as it appeared in the manuscript, “II.”

Another problem was that his margins were too narrow, about a half-inch or less at the top, left, and right. At the bottom he often kept going until he ran out of paper, in other words the last line was just above the bottom of the sheet. This is a big problem when using carbon paper, because no matter how well you line all the sheets up at the start, once you roll them all together into the typewriter carriage, the sheets tend to slip and no longer line up. Not only can the sheets of paper no longer line up properly, but the sheets of carbon paper no long completely cover the page underneath. As a result some letter at the end of a line were missing, and the worst problem was the sometimes a whole line or two would be missing or illegible at the bottom of the page. For me, there was nothing to do in those cases but to insert a [note indicating illegibility].


©2009 Robert M. Fleming Jr.

This page was last revised on 16 July 2009.