The majority of our manuscripts are written in a single hand, with the exception of
relatively recent annotations by repository staff or librarians which we do not consider
to be substantive. However, there are some cases where a second scribe has added annotations
which we consider to be significant, and to handle these cases, we use the <handShift> element. There are two stages to using this element.
First, we have to set up a basic description of the different hands that appear in
the manuscript. This is done in the header, in a <handNotes> element inside <profileDesc>. It would look something like this:
<handNotes><handNote xml:id="ms60_handA"><p>The primary hand in which MS 60 is written.... [add info here].</p></handNote><handNote xml:id="ms60_handB"><p>The secondary hand in MS 60, which.... [add info here].</p></handNote></handNotes>
Each <handNote> element has an xml:id attribute which begins with the id of the manuscript followed by an underscore. It
contains a description of the hand, which can include anything you might know about
the scribe. In most cases, we assume that the primary hand is that of the author,
assuming we know the identity of the author, and we may know something about other
scribes. You can also describe the features that distinguish a secondary hand from
other hands (letter size and shape, ink quality and colour, and any other idiosyncracies).
Once we have <handNote> elements to point to, we can start to add <handShift> elements. These are milestone elements; in other words, they are empty elements that simply signal when the hand
changes from one to another. You may wonder why we donʼt wrap text which is in a different
hand in a container element; this is because scribal insertions frequently appear
in the middle of one element and overlap the main document hierarchy, so using a container
element is often impractical.
We start with the assumption that the main text is written from the beginning in the
main hand (the first one defined in the <handNotes>). Then, when a secondary hand appears, we simply add a <handShift> element, pointing to the id of the new hand using the new attribute:
<entryFree> ...this is in the original hand... <handShift new="#ms60_handB"/> and this is in the secondary hand... <handShift new="#ms60_handA"/> and this is back to the original hand. </entryFree>
Here is a more detailed worked example, based on this part of MS Misc:
Figure 9. A section from the Potier Miscellanea MS, p.211. In the header, we have:
<handNotes><handNote xml:id="msPotierMisc_handA"><p>The primary hand in which the Potier Miscellanea MS is written, presumed to be Potierʼs
own hand.</p></handNote><handNote xml:id="msPotierMisc_handB"><p>The secondary hand in Potier Miscellanea, which is in a darker ink. Annotations in
this hand appear to be later additions to the MS, since they mention dates more than
40 years after the MS was composed.</p></handNote></handNotes>
