l v i i i E DITORIAL METHOD
List of Texts, on the relevant title page, and in a textual note.
Where a document is enclosed with a letter, and the letter serves only as a cover
letter with no independent character of its own, the two items are presented together
with a common number.
Where repetitious text fragments or unrelated text or equations occur in the orig-
inal of a draft, they are omitted in the presentation of the transcribed text.
An author’s emendation to a text, made at about the time the document was
written, is silently inserted into the flow of the text unless the insertion is awkward;
where it is useful to call the reader’s attention to the original placement of the
emendation, this is noted; where the emendation serves as a comment on the text
but does not fit seamlessly, it is noted in an endnote.
Doubly or triply underscored words are presented in the same way as singly
underscored words, that is, they are italicized. They are annotated only if the mul-
tiple underscoring is particularly significant or if accompanied by other marks of
emphasis such as exclamation points.
Where place names or official phrases appear in italics or in all capital letters in
the salutation, dateline, or closure of an original, they are consistently rendered in
roman font with first-letter capitalization.
Where it has not proved possible to redraw adequately an original drawing ac-
companying a text, it has been scanned in. In such cases we have used endnote
markers at the text fragments that appear with the drawing and have transcribed the
relevant words or phrases in the annotation.
German, French, or Italian passages from a draft quoted in the endnotes as text
variants are not translated in the endnotes. Translations are only provided if a pas-
sage is quoted for the purpose of commentary.
TRANSCRIPTION
We aim in our transcription procedure to maintain substantial faithfulness to the
original texts. No corrections, additions, deletions, or changes of characters, punc-
tuation, or arrangement are made except as set forth below.
Einstein wrote in Gothic script (“deutsche Schrift”) until July 1905 (Vol. 5,
Doc. 29), when he switched to Latin script, which he used for the rest of his life.
All of his texts are printed in Latin type.
A dateline is placed flush right above the text, regardless of its position in the
original. Editorial additions or corrections to the dateline are in square brackets,
with question marks following uncertain parts of the dateline, or in the descriptive
note. The designation “circa,” abbreviated “ca.,” indicates uncertainty within a few