There are a few things that don't have a standard representation in ABC yet. This includes the fermata () and segno () signs. Since we use abc2ps to return music here, I'm tentavely recommending its symbols when it has one. But this is an area of ongoing discussion, and in some cases, all we can do is adopt a convention and hope that it will be widely implemented in the future.

Required Fields in Header
X:	Tune number in file. Leave it set to 1.
R:	Rhythm. For most tunes, this is the word after the long dash in the title line. A few of these are wrong. Thus, the 9/8 jigs should be labelled "slipjig" rather than just "jig".
T:	Title. The books have titles in all upper case, but feel free to use normal English title capitalization if you prefer. Enter the long dash as -- (two hyphens), followed by the rhythm or dance name. The resulting titles should all be unique. If you discover a duplicate, please report it. There are a few tunes that have second titles; the best way to handle them is to include a second T: line in the tune-input area. You can include any additional headers you like there.
K:	Key. In Ryan/Cole we find mostly major and minor key signatures, but dorian and mixolydian occur in a few tunes. "K:EDor" or "K:AMix" may be used for such tunes.
M:	Meter. 6/8 for jigs, 2/4 or C| for reels, as written in the book.
L:	Default note length- normally 1/8, but 1/16 for most of the 2/4 tunes. It's best to always include this.
N:	Notes. This is where the dance descriptions should go, for tunes that have a dance.
B:	Book. The menu should be used to indicate which book you used. We believe that Ryan's and Cole's are identical, but this may not actually be true.
Notes Standards
Line breaks	Place staff (line) breaks in the abc every four bars. We aren't trying to preserve the line breaks in the original, because this isn't musically significant, and doesn't work well with a lot of music software. Short alternate endings should be on the same staff, while longer (4-bar) endings should be on separate staffs. We are trying to keep lines under 80 characters, to avoid email problems, so use \ (backslash) to break long lines into several shorter lines.
Beam Groups	Keep beaming as close to the original as possible
Accidentals	Accidentals sometimes seem unnecessary in the original, but resist the urge to make corrections- copy everything as originally written in the book.
Ornaments	A trill/ornament/roll is marked with a ~ before the note.
Accent marks	You can use k for the light accent , and K for the strong accent . Some ABC programs recognize these, including the abc2ps that we use here.
Grace notes	A grace note is placed in {} brackets. Put grace notes inside parens used for slurs, as some ABC software ignores grace notes outside of parens. There are a few cases of grace notes at the end of a measure. Most ABC programs will ignore such grace notes or give errors, but notate them anyway. Maybe eventually we can get the software fixed to handle this correctly.
Staccato	A staccato note is shown with a '.' before the note to mark as staccato. It is easy to miss a staccato- please check your notes carefully.
Annotations
Bow direction	Abc uses u for an up-bow and v for a down-bow. This is easy to get wrong. Here are how they look in Ryan/Cole: ABC book meaning u up-bow v down-bow
Fermata	Use H ("Hold") for the fermata. This is used over bar lines as well as over notes. Some ABC software doesn't display a fermata over a bar line, but it is legal and should be used. We can discuss it with the software developers later.
da Capo segno () fermata ()	These must be represented for now with quoted text, usually used for accompaniment chords. The new standard uses "^text" for annotations above the staff and "_text" for annotations below the staff; these may be used to emphasize that such things are not chords. Use "^Segno"| for the Segno symbol above a bar line, "_D.C."|] for the D.C. symbol below the double bar, and so on. (Experiments show that "^Segno"|] doesn't always display properly, but with abc2ps (used here), "^Segno"[|]|] seems to work. This is presumably a bug that will be fixed sometime.)
Fingerings	These may be quoted and put before a note, as "4"e. Some software now accepts !4! instead, but it's probably best to not use this for now, until more software knows how to hand it.