Over the nearly seventy-year period during which he kept journals, Richards was the only one to write in his journals. The first six volumes were written in record books—large, bound books with ruled pages. Most of the rest of the volumes were written in small pocket books, herein called daybooks. The last two volumes of his journal were written on loose pages that were then bound together with a post binding.

Physical descriptions of the record books and daybooks are included with the relevant transcripts. Photographs of books can be found at the Photos page on this site.

Standardized headings giving dates and days of the week have been supplied in a larger typeface for each entry to aid in navigating the journal. These standardized headings replace the dates as written in the journal. Original page numbers were preprinted and are provided in brackets.

Paragraphs are given in a standard format, with indention regularized and with blank lines between paragraphs generally omitted.

If Richards intended to underline the whole word or phrase but did not, the entire word or phrase is underlined here. Likewise, if more than the intended word or phrase was underlined, only the intended word or phrase is underlined in the final copy. Double or wavy underlining is regularized to single underlining.

Words canceled in the original have been struck through in this publication. Inserted words are set off in <angle brackets>.

Insubstantial cancellations and insertions—those used only to correct spelling and punctuation—are silently emended, and only the final spelling and punctuation are reproduced. If the correction alters the meaning, the underlying word is transcribed as a strikeout and the correction written thereafter as an <insertion>. If it is apparent that the correction was made immediately after the inscription was made, the preferred word simply follows the canceled one without insertion marks. For cases in which an original word was changed to a new word by canceling or inserting letters in the middle of the word, for readability the original word is stricken in its entirety followed by the revised word in its entirety.

Insertions above or below a line of text or written in a margin are indicated by angle brackets < > at the apparent intended point of insertion.

Words, letters, or punctuation marks inserted by the editors to expand, correct, or clarify the text are enclosed in square brackets [ ]. A question mark is added to conjectured editorial insertions.

Significant descriptions of the textual medium, especially those inhibiting legibility, are italicized and enclosed in brackets: [hole in paper], [leaf torn], [blank].

An illegible (but not canceled) word is represented by the italicized word illegible enclosed in brackets. An illegible character within a partially legible word is rendered with a hollow diamond. Repeated diamonds represent the approximate number of illegible characters (for example: sto◊◊◊s).

Illegible cancellations are not included.

Single instances of periods, commas, and apostrophes are all faithfully rendered without regard to their grammatical correctness. Richards frequently placed a dash at the end of a sentence to signify a period. In such cases, the punctuation is rendered as a period. In some cases of repetitive punctuation, only the final mark or final intention is transcribed while other characters are silently omitted. Flourishes and other decorative inscriptions are not reproduced or noted. Dashes are standardized to either em or en lengths.

Words hyphenated or otherwise divided at the end of one line and the beginning of another are reproduced as though written on the same line and hyphenated or not according to Richards’s normal usage or, where that is not clear, modern usage.

Line ends are neither typographically nor symbolically represented.

Richards had various ways of handling superscriptions. These various forms are all standardized so that they appear on the line, rather than as superscriptions (for example, $7⁵⁰ is rendered as $7.50).