Transliteration Conventions

Cuneiform text in the individual text pages of the CDLI is transliterated following the conventions described here. Note in particular the quick reference table with the following, more common ATF (“ASCII Transliteration Format”) conventions:

• sz = /shin/
• h = /khet/
• “*” denotes collation of the preceding sign
• “#” denotes damage to the preceding sign
• “?” denotes uncertainty of identification or reading of the preceding sign
• “!” denotes editor’s correction of the preceding sign
• “<...>” denotes an accidental omission supplied by editor
• “<<...>>” denotes material removed by editor
• “{...}” denotes single-sign gloss/determinative delimiters
• “|...|” denotes compound grapheme delimiters

Cuneiform text in the html versions of contributions to the online journals CDLJ, CDLB and CDLN is transliterated using the following simple conventions:

• h = /khet/
• c, = emphatic c(onsonant) in Akkadian
• ´ = open half bracket (denoting disturbed text)
• ` = close half bracket
• [ = open bracket (denoting missing/reconstructed text)
• ] = close bracket

We expect to make several refinements to these conventions as browser technology improvements allow, but we do recommend that the user update to the most recent software versions available in order to view the Unicode characters that are employed in our pages, and particularly that users download and insert in their fonts folder the font CuneiformComposite.ttf developed by S. Tinney for use in CDLI and ePSD.



Referencing the online journals

We recommend the citation of the online journals of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initative in one of two forms. A long and full reference for the first CDLJ article of the year 2008 would be, for instance, http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2008/cdlj2008_001.html, simply copying and pasting the URL of that article (with preferential reference to the hypertext version of the paper instead of the PDF copy). Paragraphs/sections within the online articles are coded for more specific references, thus http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2008/cdlj2008_001.html:§2 refers to paragraph/section two of the same article. The short form of the latter of these two citations would be CDLJ 2008/1 §2.


Last updated: 20 April 2009