Citing an emailed PDF transcript of an image copy of a manuscript

History-Hunter, if I understand you correctly, you have three separate things that need to be be cited:

1. Images of an original manuscript held by the University of British Columbia in its archives. (Caveat: I’m not sure what you mean by “unfinished manuscript.”)
2. A PDF of an unpublished typescript of that manuscript by Mercer, Payne, and Fowler.
3. An email from Mercer that transmits those documents.

By best practice, your citations would be to the original whose images you are studying for yourself.  By common practice, you will likely use the MPF typescript to help you read passages and may occasionally need or want to reference specific spots in the typescript, in addition to your general acknowledgment of the typescript in your first reference note.  At times, you may need to reference something said in the email.

If this is your intent, then your first reference note would cite all three.

• First, you would cite the manuscript, in full, following the pattern for any manuscript held in an archives. (EE 3.1)
• Second, you would cite the unpublished typescript. (EE has several examples of this; 7.31 might be the closest.)
• Third, your first note would say that both were transmitted to you via email and then cite the essentials for an email. (Again, EE has several examples of email that transmits documents, starting with the QuickCheck Model on p. 112, “Private Holdings: Personal Correspondence.”)

Given the complexity of this all-inclusive first citation, EE would cite each item in its own “sentence,” within the same “paragraph.”

In subsequent notes, you would cite a short form of only the item you used. If you wish, each subsequent note could be a short-form cite to a specific section of both the original and the typescript.

Your Source List Entry would be best handled as three separate entries because you have three separate things.

> A PDF of an unpublished typescript of that manuscript by Mercer, Payne, and Fowler.

> By best practice, your citations would be to the original whose images you are studying for yourself.  By common practice, you will likely use the MPF typescript.

History-Hunter, your question about my reference to "'MPF' typescript" provides another instructive example. Even though I, as writer of those two points, felt that context and word repetition made clear my intent with "MPF," my lazy shortcut was clearly not as clear as I assumed. Lesson learned.

As for citing "rank [or] degrees" of the original authors, see 2.17 “Citing Personal Tiles, Credentials & Degrees” (Fundamentals of Citation chapter):

Formally published citations, as a rule, do not include the titles, credentials, or degrees held by the authors. In our working notes, we will likely want to include relevant degrees and credentials to assist us in future evaluations of the weight of that source. For situations in which credentials would be a relevant part of a citation, see 3.44 and 4.28.

The examples at 4.28 begin with this elaboration upon 2.17:

Unpublished reports of an intellectual nature are evaluated by not only their content but also the credentials of the person who conducted the research. For that reason, tested, professional credentials should be included in the citation, if they are earned in the profession that is being practiced. Honorifics, however, would not be relevant to a source citation.

History-Hunter, you are obviously thinking this through deeply. At this point you are better equipped than I to determine whether all necessary elements have been covered. You have the material at hand; I have not had the opportunity to examine the file. As a corollary, every one of the 1,100+ examples used in EE represent situations in which I have personally used the cited material and was able to analyze context and quirks. It would be foolhardy for me, here at this EE forum, to attempt to sign-off on a citation to material I had not seen or studied

What I can do is ask questions or speak to generalities. These come to mind:

1. Is it your intent to cite all three sources in every footnote? More realistically, would you not be citing one thing in one note and another thing in a different note?  Even if the first note cited all three with an explanation, is it not more likely that a subsequent note would cite just one of the three?

2. Did you intend, in the first reference note, to split the e-mail citation into two different sentences?

3. The original source (the first source cited in the first reference note) is a photocopy of a typed manuscript, rather than a photocopy of a typescript. A typescript is made when someone transcribes something else and produces it in a typed format.

4. The standard format for citing an unpublished manuscript (see QuickStart Guide for "Manuscripts" and elsewhere in EE) is this:

Author, "Title," descriptor and/or date. p. no.; file location; archive, archive location.

This follows the standard basic pattern of going from the smallest item to the largest. Is there a reason why you chose to insert the filing number between the title and the date? That filing number is a creation by the library/archive rather than the author, is it not?

5. Do you not feel that your reader needs to know where this manuscript is held—or that the need to authenticate your citation requires a statement of where this manuscript is held?

6. In the second source cited in note 1 (the typescript of the typescript), in the field for the page number of specific interest, there appears "maintaining original pagination."  Do you feel that is clearer to your reader than simply saying "p. ___"? 

7. Do you feel that citing those three sources in one reference note will make clear to the reader the relationship between the three sources—without an explanation of how one is connected to the other?