Index talk:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu

@TE(æ)A,ea.: I'm pleased that this book has caught your interest and we can work on it together. Two questions:

• The style guide advises using "straight quotes" instead of "curly quotes." I've made this change on a couple of pages, but wanted to check in with you before continuing. I think the reason is that straight quotes perform better in search engines and the like...but it's not of critical importance to me. I think it's best if we're on the same page for this book, so maybe you can tell me, do you feel strongly about using curly quotes, or can we switch to straight ones? I'll go whichever way you prefer.
• I'd like to get high resolution images for the photos in the book, but wanted to check with you first, so we don't duplicate each other's efforts. Is that something you're already working on?
• And finally, I'm curious -- is Oregon history a particular interest of yours? If so, I have several other things I'm working on, which I might point out to you. My main focus here has been the works of Frances Fuller Victor, considered the "mother of Oregon history" -- but I've run into many interesting related and unrelated topics.

-Pete (talk) 19:55, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

• I had just finished working on The Country Boy when I randomly picked this work to complete next—it seems I really like Oregon. If you’re interested in creating images, (not particularly related to Oregon history,) I also came across this index. Needless to say, I am not particularly well versed in matters of images, so I’ll leave all of that to you. Do you have any Oregon-related works of any specific interest? I would be happy to work on more of them with you. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:08, 26 June 2020 (UTC).
  • @TE(æ)A,ea.: This is great, to have another set of hands on these works, and I'm glad Oregon has caught your interest. I've found a number of interesting works, and started probably more transcriptions than I have capacity to finish. One of particular interest to me, which is more challenging to work on (dense with footnotes) but very important, is History of Oregon (Bancroft)/Volume 1, which was written by Fuller. Generally considered the first disciplined work of history about Oregon, written at a time when many of the original pioneers were still around to be interviewed. With the help of a couple of others, we've gotten through most of the first volume, but some extra help would be fantastic to get over the "finish line." If you're happier with something less dense, though, I could certainly come up with more suggestions. The various volumes of the Oregon Historical Quarterly are another major project of mine, and some parts of that are pretty easy reading, and it doesn't tend to have a ton of footnotes. -Pete (talk) 22:19, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
  • And, I'm happy to help out with images where I can; but the techniques I've figured out are pretty specific to the Internet Archive, so I'm not really sure how to go about accessing high quality images, or doing anything at "scale", for a work like the one you linked. I'll keep poking around though and see what I can figure out. -Pete (talk) 22:20, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
    • I didn’t even know that that work wasn’t from the Internet Archive—I’ve never even heard of that Web-site. I’d be happy to work on the History of Oregon—I’ve seen worse (like this or this, not to mention this, which is barely in English)—so I’ll probably start working on that once I finish up this work. I can also give you a list of some works missing images which I find interesting, if you want a little extra work. I’m certainly open to any suggestions you may have. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:26, 26 June 2020 (UTC).

Extra space in contractions

@TE(æ)A,ea.: I think we might be working at cross purposes on this typographical oddity, curious what you think. See Special:Diff/10295780 for an example of what I'm talking about.

In this work, there is consistently an extra space in contracted words (effectively treating them as two words). For instance, instead of didn't, the word is rendered as did n't. In my view, that seems to be a decision of the printer or typesetter, not of the author or editor; a peculiarity in how the text was presented, rather than a quality of the work itself. So in proofreading, I've been removing these extraneous spaces. Do you disagree? -Pete (talk) 20:18, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

• As I “understand” policy, if the change is typographical, or entered by the printer incorrectly, it should be marked with {{SIC}}, rather than just changed. As marking all of those incidences would take quite some time, I have just marked the pages as they were in the original—with the space. If you would prefer to have the space removed, I can go over my edits to this point, after I go over the next ~100 pages of the History of Oregon. Also, this previous work of mine, (from the Internet Archive,) has many images, if you want something to spend some time on.
• Separate question: is All Over Oregon and Washington needed? I’ve been clearing out pages in Category:Incomplete texts without a source, and, having noticed the page, thought to ask you of it. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:36, 2 July 2020 (UTC).

As for spacing and policies, I feel like I've heard somewhat conflicting things from the old hands around here, and I've had trouble finding clear guidance. So I tend to follow my own conscience on these things for the most part. Specifically, I've been advised several times that the distinction I described above is legitimate (i.e., between the words of the author vs. the decisions of the printer). This specific case might be a good one for the Scriptorium, poll the views of some regular editors.

I've taken up your other question at Author talk:Frances Fuller Victor, as it relates to several of her works. -Pete (talk) 22:23, 3 July 2020 (UTC)