Part 5: Copying Errors
On this page, I will explore the possibility that there are several “probable” transcription errors found on today’s Caractors Transcript. A “cleaned up” artist’s representation of that document follows:
Notice the left margin of the upper image is much more even than the right. This indicates it was copied from left-to-right as a person would write in English. Note also the rather uneven nature of the lines, again indicative of an unskilled hand, copying an unfamiliar script, using unlined paper.
The following is the author’s conjecture about how the characters appeared on the original metal plates:
Notice the very even right margin and the uneven margin on the left. Note also the straightened lines. Both Egyptian and Hebrew were characteristically written in very straight lines. Also, some characters have been raised or lowered slightly, following positional rules (what parts of a particular character were at the top, middle, or bottom of the baseline of the character lines) that were not recognized by Joseph Smith, Jr. when he made the original copy.
As an example of how Joseph Smith probably incorrectly combined some characters, see A8 (the 8th character from the right in the top line) in the following illustration. Note the ‘fuzziness’ of meaning that results from the mis-combination of root elements.
