What We Would Have Done Differently Now That It is Too Late

Authors

Louis R. Harlan, University of Maryland at College Park
Raymond W. Smock, University of Maryland at College ParkFollow

Date of this Version

1980

Document Type

Article

Citation

Newsletter of the Association for Documentary Editing, Volume 2, Number 2, May 1980. ISSN 0196-7134

Comments

© Association for Documentary Editing, 1980. Used by permission.

Abstract

Without trying to explain away an error that gross, we can only say that it is the kind of error that occurred only once, and occurred in spite of our editorial method rather than because of it. Most of the other outright errors were less egregious: misspelled names; failure to annotate at it appeared in the original, though we doubt that history was changed by the omission of that particular punctuation. We would still continue to correct obvious typographical errors in typewritten or printed documents. Maybe a type does reveal something deeply hidden, but is it deeply hidden in the author or the stenographer? Only a psycho-historian can analyze all the typos of a lifetime and reach conclusions as to their psychological significance, and for that he would surely want to see the originals, to see if the typist was agitated enough to punch out all the O's.