Once you sign up for an account, a new transcribe tab will appear above each page.
You can create or edit transcriptions by modifying the text entry field and saving. Each modification is stored as a separate version of the page, so that it should be easy to revert to older versions if necessary.
Registered users can also add notes to pages to comment on difficult words, suggest readings, or discuss the texts
To create a
link within a transcription, surround the text with double square braces.
Example: Say that we want to create a subject
link for Dr. Owen in the text
Dr. Owen and his wife came by for fried chicken today.
Place [[ and ]] around Dr Owen like this:
[[Dr. Owen]] and his wife came by for fried chicken today.
When you save the page, a new subject will be
created for Dr. Owen, and
the page will be added to its index. You can add an article about Dr.
Owen—perhaps biographical notes or references—to
the subject by clicking on "Dr. Owen" and clicking the "Edit" tab.
To create a subject link with a different name from that used within the text, use double braces with a
pipe as follows: [[official name of subject|name used in the text]].
For example:
[[Dr. Owen]] and [[Dr. Owen's wife|his wife]] came by for fried chicken today.
This will create a subject for Dr. Owen's wife and link the text
"his wife" to that subject.
In the example above, we don't know Dr. Owen's wife's name, but created a subject for her anyway. If we later discover that her name is "Juanita", all we have to do is edit the subject title:
edit tab.[[Dr. Owen]] and [[Juanita Owen|his wife]] came by for fried chicken today.
Occasionally you may find that two subjects actually refer to the same person.=A0 When this
happens, rather than painstakingly updating each link, you can use the Combine button
at the bottom of the subject page.
For example, if one page reads:
[[Dr. Owen]] and [[Juanita Owen|his wife]] came by for [[fried chicken]] today.
while a different page contains
Jim bought a [[chicken]] today.
you can combine chicken with fried chicken by going to the chicken article
and reviewing the combination suggestions at the bottom of the screen. Combining fried chicken
into chicken will update all links to point to chicken instead, copy any article text
from the fried chicken article onto the end of the chicken article, then delete the
fried chicken subject.
Whenever text is linked to a subject, that fact can be used by the system to suggest links in new pages. At the bottom of the transcription screen, there is an "Autolink" button. This will refresh the transcription text with suggested links, which should then be reviewed and may be saved.
Using our example, the system already knows that "Dr.
Owen" links to Dr. Owen and "his wife" links to Juanita Owen. If a new page reads
We told Dr. Owen about Sam Jones and his wife.
pressing Autolink will suggest these links:
We told [[Dr. Owen]] about Sam Jones and [[Juanita Owen|his wife]].
In this case, the link around "Dr. Owen" is correct, but we must
edit the suggested link that incorrectly links Sam Jones's wife to Juanita Owen.
The autolink feature can save a great deal of labor and
prevent editors from forgetting to link a subject they previously thought
was important, but its suggestions still need to be reviewed before the transcription is saved.