Plans for Entry Editing

Our goal at this stage of the project is not to do any heavy editing of Fears' original entries. We will do our best to preserve, as much as possible, the conventions and formatting of the print version in the digital version.

We will, however, edit the overall structure of the entries to normalize them.

1. Each entry will begin with a date (Entry Date:) (Fears will occasionally use date spans of several days, weeks, months, and seasons -- we will retain these as well).
2. The date will be followed by the Entry (Entry:). As noted, we do not intend to make any major edits to the entries, given that there are more than 14,000 entries, but we will correct any obvious errors or problems noted by scholars.
3. The entry will be followed by the author (Author:). We are doing this for 2 reasons. One, as a digital version, users may enter the project through an individual entry; two, we do want to keep open the idea that, as the project matures, entries may be added or heavily revised, warranting a change in the author field.
4. Finally, each entry will be followed by a list of entities mentioned in the entry, allowing easy cross-referencing and access to entity pages. A category of entity will appear only if the type of entity appears in the entry. For the simple sample below, only a place, 2 people, and 1 reference are mentioned, so the category of "corporate Bodies" does not appear. For more on entities, go to Entity Pages.

Simple Sample

Entry Date: March 18, 1837 (Saturday)

Entry: Sam’s grandfather, Benjamin Lampton, age 67, died in Florida, Mo. [Wecter 47].

Author: David H. Fears

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1) People Mentioned:

• Samuel Langhorne Clemens
• Benjamin Lampton

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2) Places Mentioned:

• Florida, Missouri

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3) Publications Mentioned:

c) References:

• Wecter 47

See Digital Mark Twain Day by Day — Sample WikiText Version for more examples.