BY WAY OF EXPLANATION

BY WAY OF EXPLANATION.

     The Cortland Contrarian reprints archived newspaper articles by courtesy of Tom Tryniski’s website "Old Fulton New York Postcards" at http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html.

     By tin can and string telephones our readers have requested an explanation of our methodology.

     First, we copy each word as we see it in newsprint. This often requires correction of OCR [Optical Character Recognition] after we copy and paste. Those familiar with the process understand how difficult the labor can be.

     Second, we subdivide paragraphs from long newspaper columns. Newspaper columns frequently sacrifice indention for needed space.

    We do not correct capitalization or lack of it. We do not change singular-plural verb and subject or object arrangements. We do bracket [comments] or [suggested words] which for various reasons are not legible in the old newspaper columns.

     Occasionally we delete comas when they are used to separate a prepositional phrase. We add images often not found in the newspaper. We sometimes correct the misspelling of a word or add [sic] to the unedited word. We never change the word itself.

     Our goal is to make a complete and accurate reprint of each article or story, and to present to our readers a view of local and regional history which may stimulate curiosity, research or study.