General
Spelling
Titles
Numbers
References
Dates
General Note on Translation
Special Characters
Pronunciation
General
This blog is written in standard English. For in depth information on this blog’s general grammar and mechanics, check out Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style.
Abbreviations are used, but slightly less often than they appear in casual conversation.
Further, some liberties are taken with grammar and mechanics for effect. As such, The Elements of Style is a good general guide to this blog's use of English, but it is not a perfect one.
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Spelling
I use American spellings, since they are taken as the global standard, and therefore increase the international readability of this blog.
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Titles
All movie, play, book, newspaper, and website titles are italicized as per standard practice.
All shorter titles (like those of poems, short stories, articles, etc.) are contained in quotation marks.
The titles of entries in this blog are in title case.
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Numbers
Any number greater than nine is written using Arabic numerals (i.e.: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9). Any number less than nine is spelled out in its entirety.
Any number greater than 999 will have a comma between every three digits (eg: 1,000 or 2,345,754).
Whenever they may be used, superscript numbers correspond to their similarly numbered endnote.
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References
All references to outside sources are as complete as possible, and are made as naturally as possible within the sentence that they appear. All such references are hyperlinked to the source material, when possible.
Quoted dialogue, if it appears within larger quotations, is put in single quotation marks.
In quoted sentences or quotations that end sentences, the quotation marks are always placed after the period. Commas are placed inside quotation marks to show the end of a quotation and the flow back into original writing.
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Dates
All dates are given in standard academic format (i.e.: “May 12, 2012“ is typed “12 May 2012”).
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A General Note on Translation
The translations posted on this blog are based an intermediate high school level of Latin understanding and an advanced university understanding of Old English.
However, my own understandings of these languages aside, these translations are partially based on what seems proper.
This sense of what's proper comes from studying Latin and Old English literature, and ancient and medieval history. As a result, the translations that I post here are like beds: the mattress is made of a fairly literal translation and the sheets and blankets over that mattress are my sense of the original's context.
In the case of poetry, the sheets and blankets may seem as thick or thicker than the mattress, but this is the case because I give preference to the poetic over the literal. Poems are also much warmer companions in the cold, just as a toasty, well-blanketed bed is.
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Special Characters
Latin and Old English have their own unique pronunciations, and these are, at least with Old English, clearly represented in their written forms (their orthography).
Here are the special characters that appear in this blog:
Æ, æ; ǣ
Known as the ash, this letter is present in many ancient languages - including Latin and Old English. However, it is only used in modern transcriptions of Old Norse, and Old English. It represents a sound like the "a" in "cat." The letter ǣ represents the long form of the vowel.
Ā, ā; Ē, ē; Ī, ī; Ō, ō; Ū, ū
These are the long forms of letters, they indicate simply that the vowel is elongated. For example, a short a is like the one in cat, while a long a is like the one in late.
These characters also appear in Latin texts, and have similar pronunciations.
Þ, þ
Called "thorn," this letter is unique to the older Northern languages of Europe.
Ð, ð
Simply referred to as “eth”, this letter is just like "þ" - it represents a “th” sound.
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Pronunciation
In my readings of my source material and translations, I'm working with a well honed understanding of Old English pronunciation and a passable one of Latin pronunciation (I could read a Vatican newspaper aloud comprehensibly, but don't call on me if you need something exorcised).
If you want to find out what my understanding of the pronunciation of these dead tongues is based on check out the following:
- two great tables for Old English vowel and consonant pronunciation (both found on tutorpal.com).
- simple and straightforward guide to Latin vowels and consonants (found on the blog Latin 101).
- general guide to the International Phonetic Alphabet for general pronunciation (and chart/guide interpretation) aid (Wikipedia's entry on the subject).
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