General rules

• Written sources such as letters, instructions, printed works and text passages in pictorial sources are transcribed. Enclosures (e.g. in letters) are provided as facsimiles, but – as a rule – not transcribed. For the special features of the transcription of prints and pictorial sources, see below.
• Headings, marginal notes, special characters, images and paragraphs have been transcribed according to the original or marked as such. Line breaks have not been preserved.
• Special marks to indicate text insets, marginal notes, etc. of the authors of the respective source are also not recorded.
• Page breaks have been marked according to the original. If a word was separated in the page break in the original and then repeated in full on the next page, only the latter is transcribed. Catchwords are silently ignored.
• Insertions or textual transfer from other sources are marked if known.

Character encoding

The text is reproduced faithfully, except for:

• i, j, u, v, w are transcribed according to their phonetic value (e.g.: beuelch → bevelh, fraw → frau)
  Exceptions: Proper names and ie- at the beginning of words (remains ie- and is not transformed into j).
• S, ß, ss, sz, z are retained, but ßs is simplified as ß; the fricative sh becomes sch if it corresponds to the spelling of the modern German word.
• Diacritical marks of vowels are rendered mutatis mutandis (e.g. freündtschafft, Teütschland, breüch). For the Latin genitive, ÿ (as well as ij) is simplified to ii (e.g. Martÿ → Martii, Internuntÿ → Internuntii); in German words, ÿ is simplified to y.
• Diacritical marks such as in ů are not recorded.
• The verbal ending -ieren follows the original, e.g. cediren, dechiffriren.
• Abbreviated word endings and obviously missing letters have been tacitly supplied by the editors.

Dates, numerals, currency symbols, etc.

• There is no full stop after cardinal numbers; this also applies to alphabetical numbering such as in „laut beylag A.“ → „laut beylag A“
• Ordinal numbers in unusual form are transcribed according to today’s spelling (e.g.: 3.ten. → 3.).
• Years are written out in full (e.g.: 719 → 1719).
• Thousands are expanded (e.g.: 70m → 70,000).
• Numbers greater than twelve appear rendered in digit figures.
• Abbreviated units of currency are abbreviated according to the list of abbreviations. If the currency is written out in full in the original, this is also done in the transcription.

Upper and lower case

• As a rule, lower case is used.
• Only beginning of sentences and proper names are capitalized, as well as the word „God“ and its synonyms, the word „Porte“ and its synonyms, ethnic and religious group names, as well as place names, names of weeks, holidays and months. Official titles (e.g. resident, kapudan, internuntius), salutations, institutions and all nouns not specified here are spelled in lower case.

Word separation, hyphenation and punctuation

• Word separation has been kept as close to the original as possible (e.g. groß vesir); however, modern German grammar has been taken into account as an exception (especially in structures with „zu + Inf.“ or in the case of conjunctions such as hiermit, inmassen, etc.). This also applies to passages where the original word segmentation is unclear.
• Punctuation follows the rules of modern German grammar as far as possible. To make it easier to recognise the logical context of a text, punctuation sometimes follows the necessities of the content, e.g. long sentences were sensibly structured. Full stop, comma, semicolon, question mark, quotation mark, exclamation mark, parenthesis and hyphen are used.

Graphical marks, emphasis

• Graphical marks (e.g. used for word insertions) are not reproduced. Exceptions exist where they are necessary for understanding the text (e.g. §).
• Highlighting (e.g. underlining) is not reproduced.

Textual errors and deletions

• Errors in the original are tacitly corrected unless the error has significance for the content; deletions have been marked where their contents are legible.

Illegible or missing text passages

• have been marked in the transcription.

Abbreviations

• Type 1: Frequently occurring abbreviated forms of politeness, titles, etc. such as Gn(aden), allergnädigst(e), allerunterthänigst(e), (aller)gehorsamst(e), (durch)lauchtigst(e), kayser(lich) are abbreviated according to contemporary spelling or according to the list of abbreviations.
• Type 2: Frequent grammatical abbreviations such as nasals, the endings -en/-er/-e/-es, the word „dass“ as well as abbreviated month names appear according to their meaning without further comment. Abbreviated proper names are expanded if this is possible (e.g.: Ioh. Georg Metzger → Iohann Georg Metzger).
• Type 3: Unchanged abbreviations as in the sources, such as p.p. mpp., etc., etc. are given in the list of abbreviations. In the case of abbreviations that occur in several variants, a standardised variant is reproduced in the edition, e.g. „ksl. Mt.“ or „Nr.“.

General

• Headings, marginal notes, special characters, images and paragraphs have been transcribed according to the original or marked as such.
• Page breaks are transcribed and marked according to the source. Catchwords are reproduced and marked.

Character set

• The character set of the respective source is reproduced. This also extends to diacritical marks such as ů.

Upper and lower case

• The upper and lower case letters are reproduced as in the source text.

Word separation, hyphenation and punctuation

• Word separation, hyphenation and spacing is transcribed as in the original.
• Punctuation characters are transcribed as in the source.