Index talk:A Naval Biographical Dictionary.djvu

Notes

If adding links

• plain links for within the work, there exists {{NavalBio lkpl}}
  The full format is {{NavalBio lkpl|entry name|display text}} e.g. {{NavalBio lkpl|Abbott, Jonas Archer|Commander Jonas Archer Abbott}}
• outside the work, for an article with book detail {{NavalBio link}}
  The full format is {{NavalBio link|entry name|display text}} e.g. {{NavalBio link|Abbott, Jonas Archer|Commander Jonas Archer Abbott}}

• Where Wikipedia links have been found they are included in the page Header Template as e.g.

| Wikipedia  = Jonas Archer Abbott

• Articles can be linked from Wikipedia using e.g. [[s:Abbott, Jonas Archer|Commander Jonas Archer Abbott]]

• Or for a full citation e.g. {{cite wikisource | class = dictionary | first = William Richard | last = O'Byrne | chapter = Abbott, Jonas Archer | wslink = A Naval Biographical Dictionary | title = A Naval Biographical Dictionary | year = 1849 | publisher = [[John Murray (publisher)|John Murray]] }}

GreyHead (talk) 09:02, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Formatting notes

• The original uses a Gothic/Fraktur face for Captain to signify those having taken retirement. Added as

  ({{blackletter|Captain}}{{sc. . . 

• This work uses curly quotes.

• This work uses the en-dash in spaces ' – ' in place of the em-dash '—' both for consistency and to aid in layout; em-dashes without spaces can result in weird line breaks.

• Spaces before stops are removed so 'officer ;' becomes 'officer;'.

• Text indents are not used unless essential to the layout.

• Diphthongs have been replaced by the two letter forms to aid searching e.g. Aetna in place of Ætna

GreyHead (talk) 08:58, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

I haven't come across any issues with em-dashes. Are the weird line breaks still happening? I validated p.1, removing spaces out of habit but can put them back in… Cheers — Zoeannl (talk) 09:51, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

I have seen problems in other works not so long ago. If an em-dash without spaces is needed then —<wbr /> works. In this case, as there are about 1400 pages styled with en-dashes, I'll probably re-edit page 1 (done) rather than the 1399 others. GreyHead (talk) 09:36, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Officer's Names

• Although shown in the original as Last name only, e.g. Abbott the Wikisource index entries are Last name, First names e.g. Abbott, Jonas Archer

• Where officers have identical names suffixes (a), (b), (c) . . . have been used to distinguish them. The same notation is used in the original work but not consistently. The original notation has been followed and extra suffixes added as required. The format is: Last name, First names Suffix e.g. Barnard, Edward (a)

• To help identify officers in the Content page, the rank and date of appointment are also shown e.g Atwater, James - Retired Commander, 1834

• The original uses M‘ rather than Mc in e.g. M‘donald. The visible text uses M‘, the Wikisource index uses Mc for clarity and to assist in search.

GreyHead (talk) 11:55, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Names of Ships

• Ships in the British navy are shown in small caps e.g. Phaeton {{sc|Phaeton}}
• Ships in other navies are shown in italics e.g. La Junon ''La Junon''

GreyHead (talk) 11:55, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

The 'Appointments to Ships' table

In the original this is a very long single multi-page table. In single table form it breaks the WikiSource element limits at around letter E so I have broken it into separate tables for each letter.

Corrigenda

There is a section of Corrigenda at the end of the book. I have added these using the Errata template:

{{errata | original text | corrected text | A_Naval_Biographical_Dictionary/Corrigenda }}

The footer box content on these pages and on the related section pages is changed to:

{{smallrefs|group="errata"}}

<hr style='width:300px;' />

{{smallrefs}}

A few of the Corrigenda are inside footnotes. In those case the <ref>. . .</ref> has been changed to {{refn|. . .}} and the footer box entries have been changed around so that the Corrigenda follow the footnotes:

{{smallrefs}}

<hr style='width:300px;' />

{{smallrefs|group="errata"}}

GreyHead (talk) 11:30, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Notes on Validation

Thank you for looking at validating pages on this work. I've written some short notes here about useful things to check and to ignore.

This is a long work - around 1500 pages - with five to six thousand separate officer entries. Any changes to the overall structure and styles that have already been used may be complex and time consuming to change. Please make suggestions on the talk page here before implementing anything.

I am running several sets of macros to format and correct each new page. These set up things like the page format and the header layout for each individual entry. They also run a search and replace for common OCR errors - just over 2,000 of them so far; and to format the names of ships - nearly 3,000 of those.

When validating please keep an eye out for these kinds of error, mostly they are from OCR errors that I, and the macros, haven't picked up.

• Words run together e.g. daughterof in place of daughter of.
• Typos, particularly in the names of people, places and ships e.g. Henry EUis in place of Henry Ellis.
• Typos are particularly likely to occur in these places: at or near the head or foot of each column where the type may be distorted; in footnotes where the type is smaller; and at places on the page where the type is damaged either with light or dark spots.
• Missing paragraph breaks. Each entry has between one and three paragraphs. When there is more than one, the first is usually about family history; the second - usually starting 'This officer . . .' is about Naval service; and the third is about life outside the Navy including marriage and children.
• Missing or incorrect links in this work. I have linked sons, brothers, cousins and other relatives in the first paragraph, I have made no attempt to link individual ship captains in the main body of entries.
• Missing or incorrect Wikipedia links. If the individual appears in Wikipedia there should be a 'Sister Project' link at the top right on the individual article page. Where I have found mention of other family members who are in Wikipedia I have linked them, again mostly in the first paragraph.
• Missing, incorrect or badly formatted text in the header block for each individual e.g. Charles Smith in place of Sir Charles Smith, Bart.
• Extra " or line-spaces between entries.
• Any places where I have wrongly corrected errors in the original which should be shown with 'SIC'.
• Use of the Mc prefix in the text in place of M‘ - I believe that I have now changed most of these.