Many of the difficulties one encounters when editing Place's manuscripts have already been thoroughly discussed and described in Mary Thale's introduction to The Autobiography of Francis Place While relatively few sections of the diaries have literally been cut out of the manuscript, several sections have been crossed out or overwritten. In those cases where I have been able to read through the overmarkings, I have presented them in this text as stricken out or, in a very few instances, noted the section as such in a footnote. As Thale noted, perhaps the most confounding aspect of the manuscripts is Place's awkward and sometimes confusing use of punctuation. Commas are often omitted entirely or replace full stops at the end of sentences. Thus, one sometimes finds commas preceding the capitalization of the first word in what appears to be the next sentence