Page talk:The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1904).djvu/45

disagree with uppercase "KNOW"

I think that the word "know" is in lower case, but in a large version of a small-cap font. The "I" is the big thing, and the printer thought that everything would be out of balance with the usual lower case font. At the beginnings of other sections, he did this to the first word, but since the first word here has a single letter, he threw in the second word.

It's pretty clear that scholars, and other editors, have taken this to be "know", rather than "KNOW", in the poem text.

I'm not sure how to mark up the font choice, but if you can mark the thing as a small-cap font, and make the font choice a <noinclude>, I think that's the right way to go.

--Mike O'D 02:57, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Well, I fibbed a bit. My Penguin edition has the enlargement of "I know" (and comparable things at the beginnings of other sections). But, in every case, the initial letter in the first line of the section ("I" in "I know") is larger than the subsequent letter, but not a drop capital. So, I still think that they are setting the first word larger, but the smaller caps should be taken as lower case in a small-cap font. --Mike O'D 03:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

"KNOW" looks to be the same height as "L" in law. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:38, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Right. The printer probably even uses the same type blocks for large lc small caps and smaller uc. But, I'm pretty sure that every literary user of the poem (and I have one editor who clearly does that, but not clearly the Penguin one) regards this as "I know". Think about one of the other ones, with a single word—the "SIX" vs. "Six" at the beginning of part II. The "S" is way bigger than the "IX", so it's natural to take the "S" as upper case and the "IX" as lower case small-caps in a large point size. In the case of "I KNOW"/"I know" the printer just saw that a single-letter word is too small to have the right visual effect, so he used two words for the initial larger type.

My artsy edition has unquestionable lower case "know", "ix", etc. My somewhat scholarly Penguin edition has "I KNOW" and "SIX", but the "I" and "S" are larger, without being dropcaps, so the "KNOW" and "IX" sure look to me like lowercases.

I bet all projects end up picking on nits of this sort at some point. Can't help myself.

--Mike O'D 04:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

These are the interesting parts :-)

Feel free to change it back to "know", or use both and have a hidden comment to tell anyone who thinks of changing it to see this talk page first. e.g.

<includeonly>know</includeonly><noinclude>KNOW</noinclude><!-- see talk --->

--John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)