[ANSTHRLD] Penciled forms considered harmful
doug bell
magnus77840 at hotmail.com
Tue Feb 16 01:47:08 PST 2010
This makes as much sense as: “The
submitter used magic markers and yellow highlighter
on the armory. I
would like to strongly encourage people not to use markers to
color
armory submissions.”
The correct answer about use of pencils
is: it depends how you intend to use andarchive the form.
Is the SCA going to rely on paper or
electronic format to archive submissions?
How many decades does the SCA wish the
material to survive?My dad worked at the Corps of Engineers from the 1940s
till the 1980s and
I have worked with over a dozen archivists over the last 30 years. The
issues of legibility and preservation have
come up time and again.
Start with the paper documents first.
A form filled out in good quality pencil in a
legible handwriting on
acid free paper should be readable if you took it out several
centuries from now. Soft pencil leads (towards the B side of HB)
tend to smear in files
if not treated with a spray fixative. Hard
pencil leads (high on the H side of HB),
over sharpened pencils, and
mechanical pencils with very narrow leads will cause
writing to be
too thin and light to read or scan easily. An H7 pencil will
actually
tear normal paper rather than write on it (they were once
used for special drafting
applications). The old advice to use a
Number 2 pencil or lead is very good.
If the writing looks bad then
don't use that pencil or lead on a submission.
Inks have their own set of issues.
Unless you use a good quality India ink there
can be problems.
Modern inks tend to eat into paper and printer inks can fade
over
time. They can be in a race with the acidic paper to see who
deteriorates first.
Blue inks have issues with some scanners and
most photocopiers. Extra fine pens
produce the same thin and faint
handwriting as the narrow pencil leads. There is also
the problem of
messy scratch-outs to correct mistakes. Even a good quality pen
won't fix chicken scratch handwriting.
Paper is probably the life issue for
SCA purposes. The average paper today can
last 30 to 70 years. A
sheet will begin to disintegrate at the edges and turn from
white to
brown. A good quality pencil or ink should be legible for that
lifetime.
Black printer inks are a wild card. We really don't know
how the individual formulas
will hold up over time as the paper
deteriorates and ink fades. You can get archival
quality but local
heralds don't use it.
Scanners have their own issues. They
don't tend to like blue ink or very faint
handwriting. Scanning
programs can be adjusted to compensate for this but
that is a pain
for hundreds of scans per month. The long term issue is someone
has
to migrate the archive to new computers and media. What happens when
CDs
are no longer made? Will computers be able to read jpg files 50
years from now?
100 years from now? Tens of thousands of files will
have to be migrated to
whatever new format is in use. The Library of
Congress has a documentary
called “Slow Fires” for both paper and
digital records on long term storage problems.
It is difficult to tell if the issue
with the forms in the ruling was the Name line
and check boxes or
documentation summary or both. The rest of the information
shouldn't
be an issue with name rulings. The documentation summary on the form
shouldn't be a problem but I know this tenure is quite sensitive to
problems with it.
This should be available in the LoI or kingdom
internal letter, kingdom heralds, or,
hopefully, from commentary. If
it isn't, that is ample grounds for return by itself.
If the Submitted name line and check
boxes are not legible enough to match the
LoI information then the
issue should be brought up in the OSCAR commentary
period rather than
the LoAR. If the submitter and local herald have produced an
unreadable document and the kingdom heralds refuse to correct the
issue whenpointed out in OSCAR, then it is time to consider
administrative pends and returns.
So what can be done to deal with
legibility issues? The ideal solution is type the
data into an
in-line form in a word processor and print out the page for
photocopying.
You can also fill out a form with dark pencil or
medium point black pen and make
photocopies. If you don't have
access to any of these use a dark pencil or medium
black pen and get
a second person to read the form to be sure it is clear. If not,
then change person or writing instrument to make it readable. I tend
to trust output from a photocopier rather than a computer printer for
clarity and long term
storage.
Magnus
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