Latin scansion

[rsherwood12]

I have a Latin textbook with a section on meter and scansion of poetry. I believe this is mostly a Formats matter, although it is a non-English language.

My main questions are:

• If the scansion marks (_/ foot and _/_/ caesura) are printed above the line at the same level as the syllable stress marks, should the scansion marks be moved down and embedded in the poetic line rather than above it with the stress marks? (inferring from BF2016 Sample 13-12)
• Since the caesura marks are above the poetic line, the spacing is not super clear. If they appear within a word, should they be unspaced from the surrounding letters? And if between words, should they be spaced?

Guidelines for line division from BF2016 (13.9.4.c-d):

• A line may not be divided at a foot or caesura symbol if it is unspaced within a word.
• A foot (the group of letters between single slashes) may not be divided between lines.

There is no way to follow these two guidelines in the attached example. In the first line of poetry, the first three foot marks appear within words and this causes the first possible place to break the line to be greater than 40 cells. Would it be a better compromise to divide a word at a foot mark to keep the foot together OR divide a foot at a space between words to keep the words undivided? In my sample, I have divided the words "puer" and "umerōs" at the foot mark rather than dividing in the middle of the foot.

Thanks for your help!

Best,
Rebecca

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[claurent]

Can you tell me the meaning of the / versus the // ?  It appears that you could divide at the places with the double lines ( // ).  From looking at Google - the double lines are the 'breaks' in the poem (the foot). It seems to me that the single lines mean something else...unless the surrounding text says otherwise 🙂   The double lines all appear to be after a word - then you are just left with that one really long bit from lines 2/3...of course I didn't braille this so I don't really know how long this would take 🙂  My inclination would be to NOT divide the words...I would break the rule about not dividing within a foot before I would break up a word...especially when it's in a foreign language.

I would absolutely put the scansion marks within the text rather than above it like it is in print. They would not make sense if they were above the words in braille.

Hope this helps 🙂

Cindi

[rsherwood12]

Hi Cindi,

In this text, the line is divided into feet using the single slash /. Principle pauses are marked with // which can occur within or between feet, but they are secondary to the foot marks. So, technically, I should only divide at a // if it comes at the end of a foot.

I'm attaching an updated example which divides two feet in order to prevent dividing words. Does this look like a good compromise to you? I agree that since the student is learning Latin, dividing words is not a great idea. I just hope that since the topic here is scansion that they will still be able to easily find the foot and pause marks.

Thanks for your help!

Rebecca

 

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[claurent]

I am out of town and for whatever reason I can't open your file. I agree with your logic and stick with the idea that dividing words is not the way to go.

 

Cindi

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