Romanization and the digital future of philology

The essay addresses romanization (generally speaking, the use of romanized print; more specifically, the act of transliteration into roman letters) to claim that philology remains all the more relevant in an age of digitized media. Focusing on examples drawn from Joseph Conrad and the Oxford English Dictionary, the essay examines how romanization makes English simultaneously a universal standard for print culture and a medium for the eclipse of romanized print form itself. The philological problems of romanized print anticipate the alphanumerical coding of text, while the digital spacing and timing of coding is organized by the lingering aftereffects of romanization.