Glossary

  • Scribe: The person whose writing survives in manuscripts and documents today.
  • Script: 'The model which the scribe has in mind's eye when he writes' (Parkes); the theoretical principles or set of rules to which the scribe aims when writing.
  • Hand: 'What [the scribe] actually puts down on the page' (Parkes). For DigiPal, 'hand' also includes some aspects of the notion of 'stint': 'hand' here refers to a single sample of writing which is produced (apparently) in a single campaign by a single individual and which survives today in a single Item Part (q.v.).

 

  • 995×1016 vs 995–1016: The boundaries of a timespan of an ongoing event such as a king’s reign or person’s life are indicated with a dash, while bounds within which a single event occurred are given with a multiplication-sign. Thus King Æthelred reigned 968–1016, whereas the manuscript BL Cotton Tiberius B.v (fols 2–73 and 77–88) was written at some point during the period 995×1016.
  • Saec. xi: 'Eleventh century' (Latin saeculo undecimo). The standard formula for dating in manuscript studies is 'saec.' (or simply 's.')followed by a roman numeral to refer to the century, so a manuscript dated to the eleventh century is 'saec. xi'. Note also that saec. is usually given in roman rather than italic type in the DigiPal website, but this is purely because of the difficulties of formatting these numbers on the computer, so 'saec.' should be understood as 'saec.'.
  • Saec. xi1: 'First half of the eleventh century'. Halves of centuries are represented by suprascript numbers: so the period c. 1000 × c. 1050 is saec. xi1, and c. 1050 × c. 1100 is saec. xi2, and so on. Note also that these numbers are usually given inline instead of suprascript in the DigiPal website, but this is purely because of the difficulties of formatting these numbers on the computer, so 'saec. xi1' should be understood as 'saec. xi1' and so on.
  • Saec. xi2/4: 'Second quarter of the eleventh century'. Quarters and thirds of centuries are represented by suprascript fractions.
  • Saec. x/xi: 'Late tenth to early eleventh century'; c. 1000.
  • Saec. xi in.: 'Early eleventh century' (Latin, saeculo undecimo ineunte).
  • Saec. xi med.: 'Mid-eleventh century' (Latin, saeculo undecimo medio).
  • Saec. xi ex.: 'Late eleventh century' (Latin, saeculo undecimo exeunte).

The exact definitions of 'early', 'mid' and 'late' in this context have been disputed and vary between authors; dates in this form which are provided as direct quotations from other sources may therefore not have the same meaning and therefore should be treated with caution. See further The Problem of Digital Dating.

 

  • Item: ‘A single exemplar of a [text]’ (FRBR). Corresponds to a physical object (book/codex, sheet, tablet, etc.).
  • Historical Item: a complete object (book/codex, sheet, tablet etc.) as it existed at an arbitrary historical point in time. Usually corresponds to a catalogue entry (Ker, Gneuss, Sawyer…).
  • Current Item: a complete object as it exists today. Usually corresponds to a single shelfmark/accession number.
  • Item part: one or more parts of an item (e.g. set of folios, fragment of a manuscript, fragment of a tablet). Item parts should be as inclusive as possible to allow mapping from a historical item to a current item. Similar to 'codicological unit' (for which see the Vocabulaire Codicologique by Denis Muzerelle).

 

  • Character: Similar to sign; more or less a set of letters in the abstract sense but also including punctuation and abbreviations. So a, b, c etc. are characters, but so also is the full stop, question mark, accent mark ( ́), etc. Note that nothing is said about what the character looks like, so a and a are the same character.
  • Allograph: A recognised variant form of the same character (e.g. a and a, or Caroline and Insular d). (But how do we define ‘recognised’?)
  • Idiograph: The way (or one of the ways) in which an individual writes a given allograph.
  • Graph: A single instance of a given sign written on the page.
  • Component: A unit which, alone or in combination, makes up a character, allograph or graph. Where the component in two different characters/allographs/graphs is produced in the same way then it should have the same name; e.g. both b and p have component 'bowl', whereas a and æ have a 'lobe'. 
  • Feature: A descriptive lable which can be applied to a component, idiograph or graph (e.g. 'long', 'short', 'wedged').