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Key to Editing A ll the manuscript material in the Collected Works has been carefully transcribed and verified (see Life and Family Appendix E: Research Methods and Sources for a description of the process of obtaining and processing this information). Illegible words and passages are so indicated, with [illeg] or [?] inserted to indicate our best reading of the word or words in question. Dates for material cited or reproduced are given wherever possible, in square brackets if they are estimates only (by an archivist, previous scholar or the editor). The type of material, whether a note, actual or dictated letter, draft or copy is given as precisely as possible. The designation ‘‘letter’’ is used only when there is good reason to believe that it was actually sent and received. In some cases both the original letter and Nightingale’s draft or copy are extant, and these show that the copies she kept are reliable. We do not use the convention of als (autograph letter signed), but our ‘‘letter’’ is close to it, bearing in mind that Nightingale often used initials rather than her signature. The electronic I-text (that is, the transcriptions as ‘‘input,’’ before editing) gives full information on supporting material (envelopes, postmarks), and whether the piece was in pen, pencil, dictated or typed. The practice was naturally to use the best source possible, the original letter where available. Where a draft or copy was also available this is noted. Sometimes the original was no longer available and a typed copy in an archive or a published copy had to be used. All sources indicated as ‘‘Add Mss’’ (Additional Manuscripts) are British Library, the largest source of Nightingale material. The Wellcome Trust History of Medicine Library is abbreviated ‘‘Wellcome.’’ Most of those materials are copies of correspondence at Claydon House, indicated as (Claydon copy). If not so indicated they are originals. To save space Nightingale’s home address (when in London) and salutations are omitted, and the item designated ‘‘from a letter.’’ Postscripts that merely repeat points or move on to a completely different subject are omitted without ellipses. / 41 To avoid use of ‘‘ibid.’’ and ‘‘op. cit.,’’ and to reduce the number of footnotes generally, citations are given at the end of a sequence if the same source is cited more than once. Subsequent citations are noted in the text with the new page or folio number given in parentheses. The term ‘‘folio’’ (abbreviated as f or ff in the plural) is used for reference to manuscript pages, p and pp for printed pages, where needed, or page numbers are given after the date or volume number without p or pp. References to material that appears in earlier volumes of the Collected Works are normally identified by our title, volume number and page number rather than the archival source. To make the text as accessible as possible spelling, punctuation and capitalization have been modernized and standardized, and most abbreviations replaced with full words, e.g., M.S. becomes manuscript. British spellings have been maintained and standardized (labour, honour ); trowsers become trousers. We have kept her old-fashioned farther ,’’ ‘‘unfrequent’’ and ‘‘unpractical,’’ but change ‘‘shew’’ to ‘‘show,’’ ‘‘staid’’ to ‘‘stayed,’’ ‘‘organise’’ to ‘‘organize,’’ ‘‘expence’’ to ‘‘expense,’’ ‘‘serjeant’’ to ‘‘sergeant,’’ ‘‘waggons’’ to ‘‘wagons’’ and ‘‘burthen’’ to ‘‘burden.’’ We change ‘‘story’’ to ‘‘storey’’ when it refers to a floor. Place names have been standardized, hence Sebastopol, and old names kept, notably Constantinople (for modern Istanbul) and Scutari (Escobar). However, Nightingale’s idiosyncratic spellings for the Crimea itself have been kept, thus Krimea, and occasionally Krim, along with the ‘‘Inkermann Caffé.’’ The ‘‘Horse Guards’’ refers to army headquarters, the offices of the commander-in-chief and his senior officers, the adjutant general and quartermaster general. The War Office was then in a separate building , with offices for the senior minister and the officers and civil servants who served him. When the war began there were two war ministers , the senior the secretary of state for war, the junior the secretary of state at war, who had mainly financial responsibilities. Terms for dates are changed to modern practice: inst., for this month, and ult., the previous month. We use modern spellings for words with ‘‘ae’’ and ‘‘oe,’’ hence, diarrhea, septicemia and hemorrhage . Note that ‘‘nuisances’’ and ‘‘filth’’ generally refer to feces. A ‘‘utensil’’ is a bedpan. Nightingale was fond of dialect and we trust that the meaning will be clear enough, as for other old-fashioned words she used. The electronic text gives...

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