Interpretative Plausibility Assessment

Notations allowing the editor to structure critical doubt by ordering alternative lectiones#footnote[lectio] according to their degree of plausibility, or by declaring them simply non-comparable.

Delimiters

SideSignNameUnicode
Left%Percent SignU+0025
Right%Percent SignU+0025

%abc% ↓ Formatter optimisation for human legibility ↓ %abc‰

SideSignNameUnicode
Left%Percent SignU+0025
Right‰Per Mill SignU+2030

Internally Allowed Constructs

ConstructSpecific ReferenceGeneral Reference
Plain—🔎 Plain
Direction—🔎 Direction
Language—🔎 Language
Whitespace—🔎 Whitespace
Newline—🔎 Newline
LineBreak—🔎 LineBreak
SectionBreak—🔎 SectionBreak
WordBreak—🔎 WordBreak
Vacat—🔎 Vacat
Gap-Known—🔎 Gap-Known
Gap-Range—🔎 Gap-Range
Gap-Unknown—🔎 Gap-Unknown
Fracture—🔎 Fracture
Unclear—🔎 Unclear
Supplied—🔎 Supplied
PreviousSeen—🔎 PreviousSeen
Omitted—🔎 Omitted
Surplus—🔎 Surplus
Erasure—🔎 Erasure
Correction—🔎 Correction
Addition—🔎 Addition
Ligature—🔎 Ligature
Abbreviation—🔎 Abbreviation
ApparatusMark—🔎 ApparatusMark
ApparatusNote—🔎 ApparatusNote
LexicalUnit—🔎 LexicalUnit
PlausibilityAssessment—🔎 PlausibilityAssessment
Strong—🔎 Strong
Emphasis—🔎 Emphasis
Comment—🔎 Comment
Cite—🔎 Cite
Locus—🔎 Locus
Facsimile—🔎 Facsimile

Plausibility Operators

The editor has two fundamental plausibility operators.

OperatorNameSymbolDescription
>Preferred≻The previous lectio is preferable to the next one
|Alternative∥The lectiones are non-comparable alternatives: the editor expresses no preference

When the editor wishes to specify the extent of the plausibility gap between two consecutive lectiones, a degree modifier may be appended to the > operator: ? (small gap) or ! (marked gap). These are the same modifiers used for absolute epistemicity (cf. Interpretative Certainty or Precision Assessment).

OperatorSymbolDescription
>?≿The previous lectio is slightly preferable to the next one: the plausibility gap is small.
>!⋟The previous lectio is clearly preferable to the next one: the plausibility gap is marked.

Each relationship exists exclusively between two adjacent lectiones (a pair). Plausibility chains with mixed assertions are permitted, freely combining > and | (cf. Examples of Mixed Plausibility Sequences).

To Draw an Analogy

To understand the structure of a plausibility chain, an architectural metaphor is helpful. Each relationship between two adjacent lectiones represents one element of a path that always proceeds from left to right, in a descending direction: the leftmost lectio is always the most plausible.

The > operator introduces a descending step, whose steepness is determined by the degree modifier: >? indicates a gentle step, > a step of medium steepness, and >! a steep step. The | operator, by contrast, introduces a landing: the two lectiones stand at the same level, with no preference expressed by the editor.

A plausibility chain is therefore an architecture of steps and landings that, taken as a whole, always tends downward — even when the path alternates between horizontal stretches and descents of varying steepness.