how do you transcribe square brackets?

Hi Rick,

You can transcribe them as they appear in the text. As you may know, square brackets are one of the few things we suggest that volunteers add to the text when they come across marginalia, illegible text, or deletions. That being said we still suggest that when author{s} or writer(s) of a particular page using square brackets in the text, you stick to our general rule of transcribing what you see and transcribe the brackets accordingly. 

Hope that helps! 

Best,

Abby

By the People Community Manager 

Additional to Abigail’s response, here is a thread clarifying the librarians’ direction on square brackets for marginalia:

historyhub.history.gov/.../brackets

Simply, you can transcribe an entry with square brackets like [3 enclosure] as [*[3 enclosures]*] or convert the square brackets to parentheses.