Once an edition text is ready, it's time to start thinking about how it could be used. Editions of medieval texts are already a niche market, and only a few people pick them off the shelves in the hope of a good read. That means that we as editors have to consider the different possible applications for the edition and who exactly is going to use them. I am currently in the process of developing two editions texts. One is a diplomatic edition, which contains all the manuscript features. The other is a critical edition, which represents what I think was the intended final form of the Ormulum.

Comparison of diplomatic and critical editions
Comparison of diplomatic and critical editions

As you can see, the text is more or less the same, the editions differ by the level of annotation. The diplomatic edition, with full annotation, is found on the left. The critical edition, with minimal annotation, is on the right. The main difference to be seen on this page is that the footnotes, all of which describe manuscript features, are removed. In addition, the italics and punctuation which mark different kinds of shorthand and text insertion are also removed. For example, Orrm would often write a line above a vowel rather than a nasal letter (such as n or m), or use common abbreviations. In Line 2, affterr 'after', is spelled <Afft> with a curlicue on the <t>, and kinde is actually spelled kīde. The use of italics indicates that the shorthand is resolved. For people who study the manuscript or the shorthand and so on, this sort is important, so it needs to be encoded in the edition in some way. For those who are interested in the religious content, or in word order, it just gets in the way. In the critical edition, only the essential information for reading the text in what we believe is its inteded final state is included.

-Andrew