Author Archives: jen

Proofreading, part 3

December 24, 2009 – 21:39

Sephardi shin Ashkenazi shin Shin, for Ashkenazim, has to have a pointy bottom. But Sephardim don’t necessarily agree with that, and many Sephardi styles give shin a rounded or flat bottom. Now, most Ashkenazim don’t think that this is a deal-breaker; you can still recognise the letter as shin, after all, but a few Ashkenazim […]

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Proofreading, part 2

December 24, 2009 – 21:38

A scribe today has an exhaustive list of rules for how each letter ought to look – here’s an example for letter shin, from the Mishnah Berurah: Shin has three heads. The first head, with the leg which is drawn out of it, is like a vav, and its face is tilted slightly upwards. The […]

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Proofreading, part 1

December 24, 2009 – 21:28

I’ve talked a bit about how it’s okay to fix mistakes, in most circumstances. This series of posts is going to deal with the finding of said mistakes. The sages were well aware that when you copy a document, and then copy from the copy, and so on, mistakes are likely to creep in over […]

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