The following are the editorial principles used to create these transcriptions:
Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation has been changed to modern conventions.
The spelling of names has been regularized.
Archaic abbreviations have been expanded, including changing all instances of
"ye" to "the"
Some archaic constructions have been moderized, such as
changing "ten of the clock" to "ten o'clock" and "Mr. Parris his house" to "Mr. Parris'
house", instances like "sayeth" and "hath" have been changed to "says" and "has", and older past tenses are modernized, for instance, "spake" to "spoke" and "rid" to "rode".
Years that are given as "1691/92" and such have been modernized to "1692".
Material that appears in square bracket has been inserted editorially for clarity,
especially in the case of names that could be a "Jr." or a "Sr."
Partial words with letters that have been lost or obscured, as far as possible,
have been reconstructed without comment. Where sections of documents are torn or otherwise
completely lost, the editorial notation "[LOST]" has been inserted.
When a person has signed something with a mark rather than a signature, the mark is
indicated by a X. Signatures are otherwise simply written out.
If a chunk of readable text has been crossed out on the document, that text is
shown with a line through it. When crossed-out letters appear to be just an apparent
misspelling that has been fixed, the cross-out has been skipped, at the discretion of the
editor.
The manuscripts do not include quotation marks when someone direct speech, repeating something they had said in another context. For instance, a sentence like this:
And she saw two cats and they said serve me.
is rendered like this:
And she saw two cats and they said, "Serve me."
however sentences like this one with reported speech, not direct speech, are not changed to use quotation marks:
The Devil did propound to her that she should never go to meeting
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