LA County Library Transcription Guidelines

• Transcribe the text as it is, including punctuation, misspellings, and abbreviations. • Do not transcribe words that have been crossed out. • You may correct a misspelled word by typing the correctly spelled word in brackets after the misspelling (e.g., werk [work]). • If you aren’t sure of a word but want to take a guess, indicate with square brackets and a question mark, e.g. [Prentiss?]. • If you have an idea about what the word might be but can’t make it out, you can indicate that in brackets, (e.g., [town?] or [name?]). • If you can't make out a word at all, type [illegible]. If you spot [illegible] in a transcription someone else has worked on, feel free to correct it if you know what the word is. • Don’t worry about formatting (e.g. underline, italic, bold, spacing, alignment, etc.). • Do not transcribe hyphens or spaces in words that occur at line breaks. • Contact us with specific questions or issues by emailing digitalprojects@library.lacounty.gov.