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Another question - in https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-ste... you
by frereubu 2y ago
Another question - in https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-ste... you talk about "modernising" spelling, e.g. changing "some one" to "someone". This may be against the implicit goal of making these accessible for a general reader, but I prefer to read what was originally written, and it feels like it crosses a line into editorialising rather than letting the original feel stand as-is. (Although of course these texts have already been "editorialised" by their original editors!) Totally your decision given the amount of effort that has clearly gone into this, but I'd be interested to read the rationale for that decision.
- acabal 2y agoThat's fine! Our editions didn't erase any of the other editions you can find online and in print. You're more than welcome to select any edition that fits your reading preferences.
- frereubu 2y agoApologies if that came across as at all critical. Genuinely interested in the rationale rather than it being a how-dare-you demand for you to explain yourself!
- acabal 2y agoSpelling varies widely across the eras our ebooks were published in. Therefore we attempt to standardize spelling to what a modern reader might be familiar with. We only make sound-alike changes, like to-morrow -> tomorrow. This is a common practice that editors and publishers have quietly engaged in for centuries. For example, today you are not reading Shakespeare in the way it was spelled in its first printing.
- cenamus 2y agoAnd you're for sure not speaking it like he would have
- frereubu 2y agoFair enough - thanks for the explanation.
- wpollock 2y agoA wonderful project! After reading this comment I couldn't help but picture medieval monks, toiling away copying old manuscripts into "modern" English. Normally a thankless task, so thank you!
- harshreality 2y agoIs there epub-specific html markup you could add to changed words to indicate their original spelling? Like alt text for images, but in a span around a word? There's the html "title" attribute, of course, which would work (mouseover shows the title attribute's value), but that isn't semantically correct for the purpose.
- acabal 2y agoNo, there are too many things to track, but all of it is in the git history. Editorial changes have a commit message prefaced with [Editorial].
- thoroughburro 2y ago> For example, today you are not reading Shakespeare in the way it was spelled in its first printing. However, we call modernised Shakespeare “abridged”.
- wlonkly 2y agoAbridged means shortened, not modernized.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago[flagged]
- bee_rider 2y agoThe text you have in your “quote” is a lot more snarky and rude than the original message. Did they edit their comment or something? Otherwise—why not quote an actual quote?
- Brian_K_White 2y agoConsidering the thrust of my comment, I don't understand the question. Obviously paraphrasing someone else's words into ones you like better is a fine and acceptable thing to do. So clearly I am just illustrating the problem by example. The real answer is twofold. 1. We don't have a special 3rd kind of quote or other punctuation mark for reinterpreted references. 2. The real one: This is not a quote that lies as you imply. It is a new message, that merely uses quotes to denote a speaker, as in a pure fictional work, where the characters dialog is in quotes, even though no actual human was actually quoted. Are there any other conundrums and baffling mysteries I can clear up for you?
- bee_rider 2y ago“I wanted a pure fictional speaker to argue against.” Ok, thanks, that makes sense.
- Brian_K_White 2y agoAh but I did paraphrase, and you did not. My paraphrasing was not a lie, and yours is.
- esrauch 2y agoWhen you use that syntax it looks like you are calling out an explicit quote; you may think that it's a reasonable paraphrase but I think most readers will see what you did as a strawman instead of a paraphrase. Better to write inline "I feel like what you said amounts to [...]" to reduce the perception they you're making up quotes they someone didn't say or even clearly imply.
- Alive-in-2025 2y agoI appreciate this service you are doing, but it would be much much better to also have an original version with archaic spelling. Double bonus points for have optional (hidden by default) explanations of words. This would be tremendously helpful to some students.
- idoubtit 2y agoI respect this choice of modernization, and I suppose some readers enjoy it, but it makes the publisher's whole work useless to me. When a text has been altered, I can't trust it respects the intent of the author, and any style inconsistency I find may be a by-product of the publisher's mangling. So, when I care about a book, I never read Standard Ebooks' edition. By the way, the modernization is more than joining a few words. Sometimes, Standard Ebooks replaces the word used at the time the book was written. For instance: This time, however, the mountain was going to [-Mahomet;-]{+Muhammad;+} The previous quote is from Galsworthy's "Forsyte Saga". The author used many French words and French spellings – like "Tchekov" for the Russian playwriter that was living in Paris. These subtleties are lost with the modernization. I also think some alterations are plain mistakes. For instance in the same book: if she wanted a good book she should read [-“Job”-]{+Job+}; his father was rather like Job while Job still had land.
- KennyBlanken 2y agoAnyone who has read books for classes in high school and above knows that even classics are routinely fucked with by publishers. Even early in the work's history. I remember even in middle school someone would invariably end up with a different publisher's edition of a book for summer reading or whatnot and we'd find changes. Unless the book is specifically declared to be the original text - and it may have to specify which original text - they're going to be edited. However, in electronic form it should be possible to include both in one file, or two files with the original in a repo branch once all the document structure stuff has been added. That text will never change, so merging formatting-only changes should be pretty painless.
- franga2000 2y agoAnd of course, none of this matters in the slightest for translated works, which almost by definition includes the vast majority of works ever written. "As it was written" is a very high bar that is simply not attainable for anything other than fairly recent works in your native language.
- bentley 2y ago