A thing about the original Fryas (in manuscript and current transcription/transliteration) which makes it harder to read for us is the inconsistent and limited punctuation: dots, tildes, horizontal dashes and sometimes dots that look like commas. (In Liko's letter actual comma's seem to have been used.) A dot can be used as period, comma, hyphen, (semi) colon, to separate words that are not parts of a compound word (but had little space between them), etc. And they are sometimes not used where they should have been.
A transcript can be intended to be an exact copy of the original. This can be useful if no good photos of the pages are available. Our transcript does not follow the line structure of the original (as Jensma's), but the paragraphs of the translation, to make the two more easily comparable; line numbers 1, 5, 10, etc. were added to make the transcript more easily comparable to the manuscript text. Long words at the end of a line are better hyphenated, to avoid large gaps at the end of a line (when lines are aligned left) or between words (when lines are justified). However, when we would use a dot for a hyphen, it can be misinterpreted as a period or comma.
A translation replaces and adds or leaves out words to make the original better understood. LJAWA ERVNÔMA became "My dear heirs", because 'dear' without 'my' is used in a formal, detached way, also to address someone not at all liked or loved: "Dear Mr. Smith".
The OL transcript may become more attractive, more understandable if dots were only used as periods (and added where they should be). I'm still in doubt about using all the various punctuation marks we have in the transcript, for example quotation and exclamation points. But comma's, hyphens, colons and question marks would much help providing an easier read. These could be added to the Standskrift font (for as far as they have not been already).
WIL WR.ALDA .T THJELDA would become WIL WR-ALDA 'T THJELDA, etc. (Note that sometimes constructions like ".T THJELDA" may have been written in de MS as "T.THJELDA".)
A 'script' (is that the term?) could help making some of the changes easier; in general, but there may be exceptions (this list is an incomplete first draft):
- dot between two letters (without a space) mostly (or always?) becomes a hyphen.
- dot followed by a space can become period, comma, (semi) colon, exclamation point, question mark, ellipsis, or em/en dash.
- dot followed by return/enter (at line end): as previous except comma and ...(?)
- dot after a space becomes apostrophe.
As always, all good advice/help is welcome.