The Nitty Grittyon Comparative Studies

Step 1: Find some stuff

selection of artifacts

Spring 2005

Spring 2006

1728 & 1738

Step 2: Make sure the stuff is comparable.

Textual relationship

Step 3: Figure out what you’re

going to do with all that.

Articulate a method.

textual analysis

Wikipedia’s 5 Pillars

Fine. But not enough.

sampled texts

How, oh how will I select articles?

Look for precedents

Emigh & Herring 2005

random article selection

Problem: then is not now

Conics? Catoptrics? Nah.

MineralsTrigonometryFortificationFalconryGarden

Make it do-able.

Trigonometry: 2,500+ edits

First and last 100 edits

Step 4: Execute. Adjust.

How do I create a comparable comparison?

comparator

Convert files.

Easy access to digital versions

Typical Problems:

18c British English and OCR

PDF to .txt

Stupid problems:

1728 ed. = beautiful

1738 ed.= bad archiving practices

4 foot wide pages

bad scans

missing sections

Solution: hand-correcting

Solution: talking to librarians

Eventually: prevail.

Clean .txt files of 18c texts

1400 edits total

Coded for 65 edit types

Chambers 1738

High edit incidence

Title1728length

1738length

Total EditsTypographic

Changes

Falconry 168 166 35 33

Fortification 2134 2039 419 365

Garden 970 970 205 200

Mineral 800 802 144 137

Trigonometry 1636 1607 365 352

Germanic capitalizationLong s shift

1668

distributed agency

Terminal

stubs

Article Creation DateCreation Length

Current Length

Falconry 1/16/03 21 6,075

Fortification 3/31/03 32 3,486

Garden 2/27/02 1 1,393

Minerals 12/12/01 236 2,698

Trigonometry 9/8/01 157 (69) 2,240

Communal and participatory

Effected through form

Open ended