Editors' guidelines

Anyone can volunteer to write a summary for one of the Encyclopedia topic pages. This page is a guide for those volunteers.

The editor's purpose

The aims of an editor is twofold:

• To make it quick and easy for a reader to understand what something (or someone) is in relation to Pepys' world
• To provide deeper information, in a more coherent form, than a long list of annotations can.

A summary should begin with a very brief paragraph, probably only a sentence or two, that captures who or what something is. For some things there might be nothing further to say, but for many a lengthier exploration can follow. You might also find several other sites or pages on the Web that are relevant. In this case it would make sense to finish your text with a list of links to these pages (see the section on Formatting for a description of how to make lists).

Movable Type

Pepys' Diary is run using software called Movable Type. You should have been provided with a username and password, and you can log in to the system at http://www.gyford.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi.

When you've done this for the first time you might want to change a few things in your Profile. Click your username at the top-right of the screen. Feel free to change your Email Address, Website URL and Password (please leave your Username and Display Name as they are -- let me know if you'd like to change them). You should also click 'Change Password' so you can set the "Password recovery word/phrase" to something that will be useful to you if you forget your password (but if worst comes to worst I can always create a new password for you).

From there (or anywhere), click the house icon near the top left of the page to go back to the Movable Type 'Dashboard'.

Once logged-in to Movable type, and on the front page, you can see a link to "Pepys' Diary - Encyclopedia". Click that to see the front page of the Encyclopedia weblog. There you can see lists of all the Entries and Comments in this weblog. An Entry is a single topic page in the Encyclopedia and a Comment is an annotation. It is possible for you to click the "Write Entry" button at the top of all the Movable Type pages and create a new page in the Encyclopedia, but please check with me first before adding new pages.

You will only be able to edit Entries that have been assigned to you. To only view those entries click the "Manage" menu at the top of the page and select "Entries". On the "Manage Entries" page you can then click the "[ change ]" link in the black bar across the top of the list of Entries. Use the drop-down menus revealed to set the form to read "Show only entries where [user] is [your username]". Once you've submitted the form by clicking the "Filter" button you can bookmark the following page which will show only your Entries. If you're looking for a specific Entry of yours you can also use the "Search Entries" form at the top-right of the page.

Click the name of the Entry you wish to edit in the list to view its editing screen. There are a number of editable fields here:

• Title Unless there's an obvious spelling error, please check with me before changing an Entry's Title.
• Body This is where you can enter and edit your text. The space can be made larger or smaller by dragging the grey bar at the bottom of the large text input field down or up. See the Formatting section for information on formatting the text.
• Extended Access this by clicking the "Extended" tab just below the Entry title. Around 10% of Entries have some text that appeared as a footnote in the 1893 Wheatley edition of the diary. If present this text is in the "Extended" section. Please don't alter this.
• Latitude, Longitude and Zoom If your Entry is about a location (building, street, city, etc.) you can enter the relevant details here and the published page will feature a map. See the section below on how to generate this data if it is missing and appropriate.
• Category It's possible to change which category an Entry is assigned to, but for now please check with me before doing this.

If you're writing a lengthy piece of text you might prefer to prepare it in a different application (eg, Word, TextPad, BBEdit, TextMate) so you can save as you go -- you don't want your browser to crash, losing your text, when you've spent an age writing it. (Although the version of Movable Type we're using now has an "Auto save" feature which should also help.)

When you've entered or updated your text you can click the "Preview" button at the bottom of the page to check it looks OK. Clicking "Preview" will not save your changes -- you'll have to click "Save this entry" on the Preview page or click "Re-Edit this entry" and then "Save" to do so.

Once you've saved the entry you can click the "View published entry" link, top right of the form, to view your published page. If there are errors, go back and make changes, then Save again. No rush!

Formatting

We format text for the site using a simple system called Markdown, rather than using HTML. HTML will work, and is necessary for a few things, but you should be able to do everything you need using Markdown, which is simpler than HTML. You can read the full Markdown documentation if you like but below is an explanation of the features you're most likely to use.

The latest version of Movable Type can generate Markdown for you if you use the formatting buttons at the top of the text input field -- give them a try to see what happens.

Paragraphs and line breaks

Leave blank lines between paragaphs to have them appear as separate paragraphs on the site. Other than this you probably won't need to force a line break, but if you do you should finish the line with two or more spaces, followed by return.

Emphasis

Italics and bold text should be used sparingly if at all. One exception is to use italics to indicate the names of books, plays, etc, instead of placing quote marks around the name. You should use underscores (or asterisks if you prefer) around the text you want to be italic or bold. eg:

*single asterisks*
_single underscores_
**double asterisks**
__double underscores__

Will become:

single asterisks
single underscores
double asterisks
double underscores

Links

You will propbably need to create links to other pages in the Encyclopedia or Diary, or elsewhere on the internet. To do this, place square brackets around the text that is to be a link, immediately followed by the URL in curved brackets. eg:

Samuel's wife was [Elizabeth](http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/150.php).

Will become:

Samuel's wife was Elizabeth.

Headers

If you're writing a lengthy piece of text you may want to separate it into sections with subheadings. Do this by putting three # symbols before the heading. eg:

### This is a subheading

Quotes

If you want to quote a substantial piece of text it will look better as an indented section, rather than simply being wrapped in "quotes". To do this, prefix lines with a > symbol. You can do this just to the first line of a paragraph. eg:

> This is a quoted paragraph that will appear indented when published which makes it easier to differentiate quotes from regular text. You don't need to put "quote marks" around the text if you do this.

> This is a series of lines,  
> Perhaps of a poem.  
> (Don't forget to put two spaces  
> at the end of each line  
> if you want each line to be separate.)

Lists

If you want to make a list of several things, perhaps a list of links to further resources, place an asterisk at the start of each line. eg:

* First item.
* Second item.
* [The third item is a link to the Diary.](http://www.pepysdiary.com/)

Will become:

• First item.
• Second item.
• The third item is a link to the Diary.

Images

For the moment please don't use any images in Encyclopedia entries. I hope to make it easy to do this at some point in the future.

Annotations

Useful information contained in annotations on the same page can be used as sources for your text. If, after using information from an annotation, there's little point in keeping the annotation around, it can be marked as 'Unpublished', which will hide it from public view.

To do this, find the Entry in Movable Type and click the link on the right of the page, under "Entry Summary" that says something like "6 comments" tab. Click the checkbox next to the comment(s) you wish to Unpublish, select "Unpublish Comment(s)" in the "More actions..." drop-down menu, and click the "Go" button. The selected comments will be removed from the public page but will still be visible from within Movable Type.

(Near the "6 comments" link is a link reading something like "6 trackbacks". Trackbacks are links from diary entries to Encyclopedia topic pages, and are used to generate the "References in the diary" section of a topic. Feel free to look at these, but please don't edit them.)

Whenever a new annotation is posted to an entry of which you are the editor, you will receive an email containing the annotation, so you can keep up to date with new information. (If you end up receiving too much email because of this feature do let me know and I'll see if we can come up with an alternative.)

Latitude, Longitude and Zoom

If your Entry is a location of some kind it can have its Latitude, Longitude and Zoom entered to generate a map on the published page. If these are missing, here's how to find the data. (If you get stuck, just ask me.)

(NOTE: This process will only really work for cities/towns/villages. If you're looking for the precise location of a particular building or position on a street Google Maps won't be much help. For UK buildings/streets try Streetmap. Navigate so you have the arrow pointed to the exact spot then scroll down to where it says "Click here to convert/measure coordinates." Use the decimal Lat/Long from the next page.)

Go to GetLatLon and search for the location.

Use the zoom control on the left-hand side to go to a magnification that shows the location and enough context around it to help place it. For example, if your location is a village, keep zooming out until the name of the village disappears, then move one step in -- this shows where the village is but also provides more context than a closer zoom would do.

Copy and paste the Latitude, Longitude and zoom level numbers at the bottom of the page into the fields on your Movable Type Entry page. Save the entry and view the published page to see how the map looks. You may need to adjust the zoom to get it just right.