Megan L. Cook

OK, but I reference several of those 123 all the time because it's easier to find them there than in the wild.

This is way out of my field, but if I were looking for what you describe, I'd probably start with Voltmer's footnotes

Same same same same same!

My experience is that this is a book that, in addition to its inherent problems, only pops up in settings that are deeply ill-suited to a nuanced discussion (punk rock show, faculty meeting, once in at an airport gate when a fellow conference-goer and I were on the same flight and delayed)

I am always amazed by how many people around me are reading (and teaching!) Caliban and the Witch and can now confirm this is a useful piece to share with those whose enthusiasm for marxist-feminist analysis (good!) outstrips their resources for critiquing Federici's historiography (which is bad)

Then I told them it was OK if they needed to take a little extra time during our break to go downstairs and get an energy drink out of the vending machine and that seemed to resonate with them more

Today I told them the story of how, the first time I went to the Bodleian to look at a manuscript, I couldn’t figure out how to open the clasps and had to ask for help. But someone with a little more experience showed me how! And now I hope I can be a version of that for them

For the record, this isn’t because my students hate learning paleography, I just like teaching it a whole lot

Yes! Not to get all zen about it, but I think paleography teaches so many useful skills around attention and patience (and also how to read 15th c manuscripts)

Both of these are really good points

We did, in fact, discuss crying while transcribing in class today (I said if they get to that point, they should be done for the day.)

On it! (I took paleography with Heather Wolfe at the Folger while a grad student, so pretty much anything useful I do in the paleography realm is directly due to her)

I love an ABC! I made a ABC handout using the ms we’re all working on (BL MS Add 37049)

Yup! Although the ms we are working with has relatively little of this

If you took $1 billion and gave it to the endowment of a different small college each day, they could each provide a free college education to several hundred students per year in perpetuity. Instead we are using that money to bomb schools and kill students in Iran, for no clearly stated purpose.

Remember that spelling is pronunciation!!!! Forget almost everything you know about modern orthography!!!!! Sounds are letters and letters are sounds!!

Oh yes! Great point, especially for Middle English

- Finally, take breaks. If you feel yourself getting frustrated or can tell your attention is slipping, step away from the work for a bit.

- Preserve manuscript capitalization (or lack thereof).
- Proofread your work! Even experienced paleographers don’t get everything right the first time, and things that seem confusing may resolve themselves with a second look.

- If there’s a letter you are not sure about, look for other similarly-shaped letters in the material that you’ve already transcribed.
- If there are letters or words you can’t make out, mark them in your transcription (use a ? for each probable letter) and come back to them later.

- Remember that many letters, most notably r and s, appear in multiple forms.
- The Middle English Dictionary allows you to search using wildcards (a ? indicating one letter, and a * indicating zero or more letters), and this can help your narrow down your possibilities.

- Are their ambiguous letters? (i j u v n m and w can look very similar in secretary hand; t and c as well.) Think about which ones make the most sense in context, and consider multiple combinations of letters. For example, four vertical strokes [minims] could be “ini” “nn” “uv” “un” “im”, and so on

More key questions:
- How many of the letters in the word you are transcribing can you identify already? What are the logical possibilities?

Key questions:
- How many words are in the line?
- How many letters are in the word?
- Are there abbreviations? Is it clear how they should be expanded, or will you need some understanding of the surrounding words in order to figure it out from context?

- Record the shelfmark and folio numbers you are transcribing, and mark it in your transcription when you move from one folio to the next.
-Use line numbers.
- Understand the format: Is it prose or verse? If verse, what is the rhyme scheme? This will help you identify when a thought begins and ends

I'm compiling a handout with paleography advice for my students. I'll post it as a thread below. What am I missing?

- Your goal is to transcribe what is written on the page as fully as possible.

There are photos: imagine green and gold band uniforms, c. 1970, west Michigan

PLAYING TROMBONE IN HIGH SCHOOL BAND. They both took lessons from the band director the summer before 9th grade, he told them about one another to motivate them to practice and improve. My mom got 1st chair, my dad challenged and knocked her into 2nd chair, and they stayed that way all four years

Ah. I bet if I wore a “talk to me about Myst” flag at the Kalamazoo medieval studies conference, I would get a *lot* of takers

But watch out for the red ones!