Your eye might go to the first line, trying to interpret every mark as a word you already know. But there is another way. Before you start transcribing, look at the entire page. Is the writing tight or loose? Are the lines even? Is there a margin? Does the scribe include a title, rubric, marginalia or change of ink? These things might tell you how the text is divided and even where the main text starts.
Study the scribe’s hand. Does he use a tall ascender or a long descender? Round or square forms? Groups of minims? Don’t assume that the letter form is always going to be the same as today’s standard. Scribes used many different letter forms, and even the same scribe might write the same letter differently at various points. Your aim here is not to read words, but rather to note the patterns that occur over the course of the folio.
Choose a line. Read through it without attempting to make sense of it. Note any forms that recur. A long descender might indicate the same letter in multiple words; a group of minims might stand for ‘i’, ‘m’, ‘n’ or ‘u’. Repetition provides clues. When you see a recurring form appearing in multiple positions within different letters, you can begin to deduce potential readings without depending entirely on context.
Pay attention to spacing, though you should bear in mind that it is not necessarily a reliable indicator. Sometimes the scribe will leave a large space within a word but little between two words. There might be a break between words at the end of the line, or between an abbreviation and the rest of a word. Rather than assuming that there will be a space before every new word, compare the spacing between the words across several lines.
Now you can start building an alphabet specific to the document. Write down the forms of any letters that seem certain next to the words in which they occur. Include variations on the long s, the ‘r’, the ‘c’, the ‘e’, and any common ligatures or contractions that the scribe uses. While you can use a standard alphabet to help you identify potential letters, the primary reference should be the manuscript itself. Your objective is not to force the scribe’s hand to conform to a particular alphabet, but to get to know the handwriting of this particular document.
At this point, you can now start transcribing the text line by line. Ensure that you keep track of the relevant page and word, and refer back to the original manuscript if you find yourself losing your place. Transcribe only what you can see before guessing at an expansion, or adding a modernisation to a spelling. Where you encounter an unclear character, mark it in brackets or a question mark rather than simply filling in the missing letter. Finally, step back, take a look at the page, and see if your transcriptions tally with the recurring strokes, spacing, and letter forms that you observed during your initial reading of the page.
