reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/are_there_symbols_for_supported_by_or/

In addition to the other excellent suggestions, I don't think you'll find anything specific that that was used historically for these, but there are certainly lots of old annotation symbols you might be able to co-opt for your personal use.

Evina Steinova has a great free cheat sheet list of annotation symbols: The Most Common Annotation Symbols in Early Medieval Western Manuscripts (a cheat sheet).

More of this rabbit hole:

• Steinová, Evina. Notam Superponere Studui: The Use of Annotation Symbols in the Early Middle Ages. Brepols, 2019.
• Cappelli, Adriano. The Elements of Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography. University of Kansas Libr., 1984.
• Coulson, Frank, and Robert Babcock. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography. Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Lindsay, W. M. Notae Latinae. Cambridge University Press, 2013. https://archive.org/download/notaelatinaeacco00lindrich/notaelatinaeacco00lindrich.pdf.
• Bains, Doris. A Supplement to Notae Latinae (Abbreviations in Latin Mss. of 850 to 1050 A.D.). Cambridge [England] University Press, 1936. http://archive.org/details/supplementtonota0000bain.

(Nota bene: most of my brief research here only extends to Western traditions, primarily in Latin and Greek. Obviously other languages and eras will have potential ideas as well.)

Tironian shorthand may have something you could repurpose as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes

Some may find the auxiliary signs of the Universal Decimal Classification useful for some of these sorts of notations for conjoining ideas.

Given the past history of these sorts of symbols and their uses, perhaps it might be useful for us all to aggregate a list of common ones we all use as a means of re-standardizing some of them in modern contexts? Which ones does everyone use?

Here are some I commonly use:

Often for quotations, citations, and provenance of ideas, I'll use Maria Popova and Tina Roth Eisenberg's Curator's Code:

• ᔥ for "via" to denote a direct quotation/source— something found elsewhere and written with little or no modification or elaboration (reformulation notes)
• ↬ for "hat tip" to stand for indirect discovery — something for which you got the idea at a source, but modified or elaborated on significantly (inspiration by a source, but which needn't be cited)

Occasionally I'll use a few nanoformats, from the microblogging space, particularly

• L: to indicate location

For mathematical proofs, in addition to their usual meanings, I'll use two symbols to separate biconditionals (necessary/sufficient conditions)

• (⇒) as a heading for the "if" portion of the proof
• (⇐) for the "only if" portion

Some historians may write 19c to indicate 19th Century, often I'll abbreviate using Roman numerals instead, so "XIX".

Occasionally, I'll also throw drolleries or other symbols into my margins to indicate idiosyncratic things that may only mean something specifically to me. This follows in the medieval traditions of the ars memoria, some of which are suggested in Cornwell, Hilarie, and James Cornwell. Saints, Signs, and Symbols: The Symbolic Language of Christian Art 3rd Edition. Church Publishing, Inc., 2009. The modern day equivalent of this might be the use of emoji with slang meanings or 1337 (leet) speak.

Maxfield suggest drawing out a timeline as a possible visual cue for helping to remember dates. He seemingly misses any mention of ars memoria techniques here.

Esta otredad de la memoria y la emergencia de un yo "distinto", histórico y flexible para dialogar, ocurre también con los wikis y los outliners. Y lo vi pasar en mi caso con El Directorio, TiddlyWiki, Leo, e incluso con Hypotesis y la lectura anotada.

Lepiter y otras herramientas ayudan a navegar las agrupaciones temáticas de notas enlazadas, pero la pérdida constante de información, por ejemplom en equipos robados, discos duros que no se revisan, backups inaccesibles, plataformas que cambian, ha sido una constante de esta memoria digital. En alguna medida he aceptado esa pérdida como un proceso de aprendizaje y desprendimiento, como un jardín zen que me(¿nos?) prepara para memorias más resilientes y conexas y exploraciones más colectivas de las mismas.

No diria tanto como modificar la historia, me pienso en la posibilidad de enriquecer la historia contada desde diferentes orillas.

.memoria .resistencias .j6 .microfascismos

Cory Doctorow's commonplace makes it easier to search, quote, and reuse in his process of synthesis.

Even early in the history of note taking treatises Jeremias Drexel acknowledges the idea that good note taking, and particularly excerpting, takes work.

Modern students seem to have now lost both the ars memoria as well as the note taking arts which helped supplant it. We really need to be able to regain both of these traditions, but it will obviously take commitment to do the work.

Jeremias Drexel is certainly a writer who complains about the work of the ars memoria, particularly for long term memory and supplants it with writing/note taking.

Some interesting concepts to explore here.

With some continued clever searching today along with some help from an expert in Elizabethan English, I've found an online version of Robert Copland's (poor) translation from the French, some notes, and a few resources for assisting in reading it for those who need the help.

The text:

• The art of memory, that otherwyse is called the Phenix A boke very behouefull and profytable to all professours of scyences. Grammaryens, rethoryciens dialectyke, legystes, phylosophres [and] theologiens. Petrus, Ravennas, ca. 1448-1508 or 9., Copland, Robert, fl. 1540-1547. [Imprynted at London: In Fletestrete at the sygne of the George by Wyllyam Myddylton, [ca. 1545]]

This is a free text transcription and will be easier to read than the original black-letter Elizabethan English version.

For those without the background in Elizabethan English, here are a few tips/hints:

• Short 3 page article/crash course on Middle English
• You can learn to read Middle English

For the more obscure/non-obvious words:

• Middle English Dictionary (online) from University of Michigan
• Project Gutenberg Middle English Dictionary

Finally, keep in mind that the letter "y" can often be a printer's substitution for the English thorn character) Þ, so you'll often see the abbreviations yͤ for "the" and yͭ as an abbreviation for "that".

Copland's original English, first printing of Ravenna can be accessed electronically through a paid Proquest account at most universities. It is listed as STC 24112 if you have access to a firewall-free site that lets you look at books on Early English Books Online (EEBO). A photocopy can be obtained through EEBO reprints on Amazon. Unless you've got some reasonable experience with Elizabethan black-latter typography, expect this version to be hard to read. It isn't annotated or modernized.

@ehcolston I'm curious to hear what the Wilson/Pena text looks like. I'm guessing it's not scholarly. I think Wilson is a recent college grad and is/was a publishing intern at a company in the LA Area. I'm not sure of Pena's background. I suspect it may be a version of the transcribed text I've linked with a modest updating of the middle English which they've self-published on Amazon.

Of course, given the multiple translations here, if anyone is aware of a more solid translation of the original Latin text into English, do let us know. The careful observer will notice that the Latin version is the longest, the French quite a bit shorter, and the English (Copland) incredibly short, so there appears to be some untranslated material in there somewhere.

I haven't searched all the versions of Peter of Ravenna's name (yet) in all locations, but I recall hearing of an Italian version as well (and it's likely that there was one given its popularity).

A bit of digging around this morning has uncovered a digital copy of a French translation in the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de santé (Paris).:

• 1545: L'art de memoire qui est aultrement inscript le phenix livre treffort utille & profitable a tous professeurs des sciences, grammariens, rheteurs, dialetiques, legistes philosophes & theologiens

Given the date and the scant 16 pages, this is likely to be the edition which was the source of Robert Copland's English translation. As the edition doesn't appear to have an author, it's possible that this was the reason that Copland's translation didn't list one either.

The Latin -> French -> middle English -> modern English route seems an awfully muddy way to go, but without anything else, it may have to suffice for some of us for the moment.

Because of the likelihood that Gray is a misspelling, it is most likely the case that he's referring here to Richard Grey)'s method from the book Memoria Technica, or, a New Method of Artificial Memory (1730).

Could they have known each other personally? Might be worth checking his massive correspondence.

Cuando un período histórico violento llega a su fin, ¿qué crees que es mejor: olvidarlo para evitar recuerdos dolorosos o recordar lo sucedido? ¿Qué consecuencias crees que puede tener cada acción?

En muchos casos, la ficción recrea episodios dramáticos o de violencia que ocurrieron de verdad, ya sea a través del cine, la literatura, la música, la pintura o cualquier otra manifestación artística. ¿Se te ocurre algún ejemplo?