Stemmatology

Alignment

During collation it may be useful to align the text of several or all witnesses, that is to write their text in a txt-document with spaces so that the parts corresponding to one another are below one another. Compare the illustration below. Alternatively many editors use spread-sheets containing one word per cell to align their collations. There are software programs able to perform this task quite well today.

Cf. data formats for textual data.

Illustration

Fig. 1. An aligned collation from a medical text, currently being edited at the University of Zurich, displaying seven witnesses' text. Where words are missing they are replaced by blank space.

In other languages

DE: Alignment (there seems to be no German word in use)
FR: alignement
IT: allineamento

PR

Attachments:

alignment.png (image/png)