Overview
With over 40 years of diaries, approximately 15,000 entries, we don't really have the in-house staff time to transcribe every word. However these diaries contain a huge amount of information of early twentieth century New Zealand life, farming, war and love. We're trailling ways we can get the transcription "crowdsourced", that is, many hands make light work.
Transcription tips
Remember there might be more than one page/image per day.
In general, type what you see - even if the grammar, spelling or facts are a bit wonky.
If you can't read a word, use square brackets around your best guess with a question mark, eg. [Waiopehu?], or write [illegible].
For spelling errors, write [sic] after it: wooly [sic]; hoggarts [sic]
For page breaks, on a new line, write
[page break]
and then start the next page's text on another new line.
Note images in square brackets on a new line, like this:
[map/plan/sketch here]
and then resume text on a new line.
Do the same thing for insertions like newspaper clippings between the pages.
Punctuation
Type what you see - eg. Adkin usually uses + for "and".
Use a double space after full stops, before a new sentence.
Symbols such as the pound symbol £ or the degrees symbol ° can be copied and pasted from this sentence.
Adkin often annotates his references to photographs taken, using numbers in circles. Please enclose these in parentheses, like this: (1)
It's fine to use a hyphen between two spaces instead of an em-dash, since the spreadsheet doesn't accept em-dashes.
No need to use a hyphen when Adkin's word spanned two lines; eg. write "weakening", not "weak-ening".
If Adkin underlined part of a day's entry, write [next paragraph underlined] beforehand, and [underlining finishes] afterwards.
Please don’t transcribe the year at the top of each page, but do transcribe the day's date as Adkin writes it.
When the dates are mixed up: Sometimes you will find that we have filed one of Adkin’s diary entries under a different date than the one he wrote. He does sometimes get mixed up – but possibly we do, too!
Abbreviations
Spell out abbreviations only the first time they are used during a day, like this:
Wgtn/Wgton - Wgton [Wellington]
20 ac. p. - 20 ac[re] p[addock]
Sect. - sect[ion]
S - S[outh]
N - N[orth]
Blk - Bl[oc]k
gall. - gall[on]
R. - R[iver]
rly - rly [railway]
SS - S[unday] S[chool]
acc - acc[ount]
pl - pl[ate]
chns - ch[ai]ns
Bldgs - Bldgs [Buildings]
A + P - [Agricultural and Pastoral]
yr - y[ea]r
SCP - we don't know what this is, do you?
No need to spell out abbreviated dates, however.
There are other abbreviations which you don't need to spell out, because they are Adkin's own personal abbreviations, such as:
UR
CK (often CK p.)
Up River (the name of a paddock on his farm)
(the name of a paddock used to show stock to a stock agent whose initials were “CK”)