Piers Plowman Electronic Archive

Piers Plowman Electronic Archive

Cambridge MS B.15.17 (W)

Presentation of Text: Style Sheets



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Using SGML markup and four different style sheets in the Multidoc Pro browser, we offer four different views of the text of W. The Scribal style sheet represents as closely as possible the readings and features of the manuscript text. Changes of script are reflected by changes in font. The Middle English text's Anglicana Formata is represented in roman letters while the Bastard Anglicana of the Latin and emphasized text is printed in italics. Changes of ink color in the original are reflected in the displayed text. We represent the scribe's habit of accentuating various bits of text by enclosing it in a red box by printing the text so enclosed in red ink inside a black box. The browser does not permit us to display the text in black and the box in red. Scribal lapses are noted by means of purple ink. We have used <SIC> tags to indicate those instances in which we take the scribe not to have written what he intended to write, but we have ignored readings the scribe might reasonably be interpreted as having intended. For instance, at W5.264, the scribe wrote nonsensical bu where he intended to write but. We print bu, but flag it with purple. However, the probably erroneous lection, at least in relation to the B archetype, prechede for prayed is not so marked in W5.43, though a textual note calls attention to this unique reading in W. Eccentric word divisions, e. g. atones for at ones, or anhundred for an hundred are spelled out as written but in lime to call attention to them. We have represented the marginal notae added by an unidentified hand with this icon: (n).

The Critical style sheet is designed to indicate what we believe the scribe intended to have written. Emendations displayed in the Critical style sheet appear in the conventional square brackets. Since the text displayed in the Critical style sheet is a reconstructed, putative text, it lacks the color features that appear in the more nearly diplomatic transcriptions of the manuscript. We conventionally use italics for Latin and French words and phrases in this style sheet. We have supplied line references to the Athlone B-text both for the convenience of readers and to provide a basis for later machine collation of documentary texts. Eccentric word divisions are silently, at least in the surface display, corrected in this style sheet. That is, atones appears as at ones, though a scholar who wishes to find all such divisions can still search for them in the browser as well as in the underlying SGML text.

In addition to the Scribal and Critical style sheets, we have included a Diplomatic style sheet that suppresses all notes, marginalia, and indications of error or eccentric word division. Its text is otherwise identical to that presented in the Scribal style sheet. The AllTags style sheet, as its name implies, is intended to display the full content of markup in SGML tags. In this style sheet alone, deleted text (where it is legible) appears within curly brackets. The brackets contain a dash for illegible material.


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Last updated: Sept. 27, 2000.
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