Early Access Editorial Policy


The Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition approaches the documents with a light editorial hand to provide the most content with the least interference to the researcher.

The documents published here have been transcribed, single proofed, and marked up using a TEI compliant version of XML. Much of our encoding deals with formatting so as make the documents easily comprehensible. Our tagging system includes page breaks, columns, and margin notes so the user can easily orient themselves within the document. We have tagged dates by day, month, and year, when discernable. The entire transcription is keyword searchable.

The transcriptions in Early Access are not authoritative. As the name of the site suggests, this is an early release of important Civil War Governors content, not the final digital edition. The transcriptions are best considered a large, searchable metadata field. The digital facsimilie of each document is the authoritative text, the transcription only helps users find that document easily.

Though, as a general rule, text is flush left, other elements of the original layout have been reflected in the transcriptions. Text in multiple columns is rendered as such in the transcription for the sake of readability. Underlined, italicized, and bold text is rendered as such. Page-spanning lines that indicate a section break in the original are rendered as horizontal rules.

If a word is uncertain, it will be wrapped in square brackets, [Governor]. When a word cannot be deciphered, it will be marked as unclear by an ellipses appearing in square brackets [ . . .]. When gaps appear in the text, often when a date or portion of a name are left to be filled in later, the space on the page will be noted by empty square brackets [ ].

Notes will be easily identifiable by being set off in angle brackets. These notes are placed as closely as possible to where they are located on the page. For text that appears in the margins, a double angle bracket will appear to indicate the left or right margin. For example, text in the left margin will appear as follows: <<left margin>, and text in the right margin will be depicted <right margin>>.

We indicate stamps, seals, and postmarks by using curly brackets. The presence of one of these features will be noted by the type of feature in italics wrapped in brackets: { Seal }. Text present and legible will appear wrapped within brackets: { Frankfort }.