I have come across different ways of transcribing square brackets in text. I’ve seen some volunteers change the square brackets shown in text to parentheses. I’m assuming that’s because we use square brackets to indicate deleted text, and they don’t want it confused. Others leave them as square brackets. I tend to leave them as square brackets but wondering what others do?
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If the Square brackets are part of a printed as opposed to handwritten page I usually change it to parentheses just so people don’t assume it is a deletion or addition. If it is handwritten I place a bracket with an asterisk on each end of the brackets.
This was discussed some time ago, and the consensus at that time was to double bracket them as marginalia, as leaving them as square brackets would mean a deletion - so, as example:
[*[1-1-15]*]
But I think parentheses would be fine too.
I asked this question privately in June and was told: “Alas, our instructions are imperfect. We hope that transcribers and readers will understand that compromise had to be made when the initial instructions were developed in 2018. From what we’ve seen over the years, square brackets are less common than round ones throughout the collections – if that’s any consolation!”
Well … Maybe that’s true of most of the collections, but square brackets are all over the place in the music. I’ve been continuing to transcribe (and “correct” as I review) them as square brackets so that I remain consistent with the rule that says to transcribe it as written. And, of course, adding the ‘[**]’ on the ends when these are hand written.