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3.1.1. General #

Challenge

Which structural features can commonly be found in prose, verse, and drama?

When you’re done, click the arrow!

The following example demonstrates a simple use of TEI markup for the encoding of structural features in prose text:

3.1.2. Title Pages #

Title pages may be encoded within <front> or <back> by using the element <titlePage>.

A title page commonly contains the title of the work (<docTitle>), which can consist of several subsections or divisions (<titlePart>), with an @type attribute documenting their role. The name of the author of the document (<docAuthor>) often occurs inside a byline (<byline>), which contains the primary statement of responsibility given for a work. Other components of <titlePage> may be the edition statement (<docEdition>), the date of a document (<docDate>), and the imprint statement (<docImprint>), which may further contain the place of publication (<pubPlace>), a date (<date> or <docDate>), and names (<name>) of, e.g., the publisher (<publisher>). Besides this information, a <titlePage> may also contain an anonymous or attributed quotation (<epigraph>), a formal statement authorizing the publication of a work (<imprimatur>), and/or an inline graphic, illustration, or figure (<graphic>).

3.3.1. Referring Strings #

Proper nouns name people, places, and objects and are easily traceable in a text, since they commonly appear with the first letter in upper case. This may be encoded with <name> carrying a @type attribute specifying the kind of object referred to.

However, people, places, and objects may also be referred to with common nouns, for which the element <rs> (referring string) may be used. This element may also carry a @type attribute specifying the kind of object referred to.

3.3.2. Dates and Time #

Any expression defining a date or time may be encoded with the corresponding elements <date> and <time>. The system or calendar to which the date belongs may be documented using a @calendar attribute. The @when attribute supplies the value of a date or time in a standard form, which is useful for text processing.

The normalised representation of the content of the <date> element should conform to a valid W3C schema datatype for expressing temporal data:

• <date when="2009" calendar="Gregorian">2009</date>
• <date when="2009​-12" calendar="Gregorian">December 2009</date>
• <date when="2009​-12​-31" calendar="Gregorian">31 Dec 2009</date>
• <date when="2009​-12​-31" calendar="Gregorian">New Year​’s Eve 2009</date>
• <date when="2009​-12​-31" calendar="Persian">Panjshanbeh 10 Dey 1388</date>
• <date when="--12​-31">last day of December</date>
• <date when="--12">December</date>
• <date when="---31">thirty​-first of the month</date>

The same counts for the normalized representation of the content of <time>:

• <time when="23​:55​:00">11​:55 pm</time>
• <time when="23​:55​:00">five minutes before midnight</time>
• <time when="2009​-12​-31​T23​:55​:00">five minutes before the new year 2010</time>

  Note

  The last example also includes a date string and can equally well be tagged as <date when="2009​-12​-31​T23​:55​:00">five minutes before the new year 2010</date>.

The <date> element can also be used to mark a span of time, using the @from and @to attributes, or a range of time, using the @notBefore and @notAfter attributes:

In this example, the @from and @to attributes in the first <date> element express a period of time, spanning from 1935 to 1960. In the second <date> element, the combination of @notBefore and @notAfter indicates a time range in the second half of September 1960.

3.3.3. Numbers and Measures #

Numbers and measures may be encoded using <num> and <measure> respectively.

<num> may contain numbers, written in any form. The attribute @type can be used to indicate the type of numeric value, and @value to supply the value of the number in standard form.

Here are more examples of the standardisation of numbers:

• <num value="25">xxv</num>
• <num type="percentage" value="25">twenty​-five percent</num>
• <num type="percentage" value="25">25%</num>
• <num type="ordinal" value="25">25th</num>

In its fullest form, a measure consists of a number, a phrase expressing units of measure, and a phrase expressing the commodity being measured, though not all of these components need to be present in every case. These three components may be encoded on a <measure> element with the attributes @quantity, @unit, and @commodity.

3.3.4. Addresses #

E-mail addresses can be encoded with the <email> element.

A postal address can be encoded with the <address> element. It can contain a number of <addrLine> elements, one for each address line.

Alternatively, an address can be encoded in more detail, with more semantically rich elements such as <street>, <postCode> and <postBox>. Names of people, organisations, companies, etc. may be encoded using <name>, with a @type attribute indicating the type of object which is being named.

3.3.5. Abbreviations and Expansions #

It is sometimes useful to encode abbreviations and their expansions in texts. This facilitates special processing, regularisation by the full form of an abbreviation, or the rendering of different possible expansions of an abbreviation. Abbreviations may be marked using <abbr>. The @type attribute may be used to distinguish types of abbreviations by their function:

Alternatively, and depending on the encoder’s preference, the expansion of an abbreviation may be encoded with <expan>. This is often done when the editor or encoder of a text has silently expanded the abbreviation for whatever reason. It is equally possible to record both the (original) abbreviation and the (editorial) expansion by wrapping both in a <choice> element.

3.4.1. Notes and Annotations #

The most explicit form of textual annotation is the addition of notes to the text using <note>. This element serves for the encoding of all kinds of annotations, whether they are already present in the text or supplied by the editor; whether they appear as block notes in the main text area, at the foot of the page, at the end of the chapter or volume, in the margin, or in some other place. The @type attribute can be used to distinguish between different types of annotations. In a @resp attribute, the person or other agency responsible for the content of the note can be identified, pointing to the @xml:id value of an element that identifies this person or agency. Where possible, a note can be inserted in the text at the point where its identifier or mark first appears. The location of the note may be documented using a @place attribute.

Here, an editorial annotation is inserted into the text, using the <note> element. Its @type attribute indicates it is an "editorial" annotation; the person responsible for its content is pointed to with the @resp attribute. In this case, it is referring to another element in the same document, with @xml:id="EV". In the @resp attribute, this ID value is preceded with a hash character (#), in order to indicate it as the identifier part of a formal URI reference.

3.4.2. Index Entries #

Pre-existing indexes may be encoded as plain lists (<list>) inside <div> in the <front> or <back> sections of a <text>, for example. On the other hand, in order to generate new indexes from machine readable text, the location to be indexed can be marked with an <index> element. When the text is being indexed on multiple levels, the name of the index can be given in an @indexName attribute. The term to be indexed should appear in a <term> element inside <index>.

Notice, how <index> entries can nest in order to create multi-level index entries. With this encoding in place, it will be possible to create an “institutions” index, with the terms “Library, National” and “Academy, Royal,” referencing the location of the original <index> element in the text.

3.4.3. Apparent Errors #

Apparent errors in the text may be indicated using the <sic> element, or corrected inside <corr>.

Alternatively, the encoder may both record the original source text and provide a correction by using both <sic> and <corr> (in either order) wrapped in a <choice> element.

The encoder may encode the degree of certainty associated with the intervention or interpretation using a @cert attribute, and indicate the agency responsible for the intervention or interpretation (for instance an editor or transcriber), using @resp. The value of @resp is a pointer to an element in the document header that is associated with a person responsible for the intervention.

The attribute value "#EV" points to a <name> element in the <teiHeader>, for example in the <respStmt> section:

3.4.4. Regularisation and Normalisation #

Standard or regularised forms for variant forms or non-standard spelling may be provided for a number of reasons. This is called regularisation or normalisation. The original, non-normalized form may be flagged using the <orig> element.

If the encoder wants to indicate that certain words have been normalised, which means modernisation of spelling in this example, the <reg> element may be used.

Alternatively, the encoder may decide to record both the original form <orig> and the regularised form <reg>, wrapped inside a <choice>. In the case of the modernisation of spelling, an electronic text could thus serve as the basis of an old- or new-spelling edition.

The @resp attribute may be used to specify the person or agency responsible for the regularisation or normalisation.

3.4.5. Additions, Deletions, and Omissions #

Another editorial intervention in the text may be the documentation and creation of additions, deletions, and omissions. When transcribing a source document, <gap> may be used to indicate a point where material has been omitted, both because the material is illegible, invisible, or inaudible in the source, and because the editor or transcriber has decided to omit material for editorial reasons or as part of sampling practice. The reason for omission may be given in a @reason attribute. Sample values include "sampling", "illegible", "inaudible", "irrelevant", "cancelled". Additional attributes like @extent and @unit may document the amount of characters, words, lines or any other unit omitted.

The <gap> element may appear as an empty element, but my also contain a description of the material omitted using <desc>.

Where words or phrases of moderate lengths have been added or deleted in the source text, this may be recorded using <add> and <del>. As with all TEI elements, information on the actual rendition of the additions and deletions can be provided in the global @rend attribute. Additionally, the place of the addition may also be recorded using @place. See Module 6: Primary Sources, section 3.1.1 for a detailed discussion of these elements and their attributes.

When additions and deletions can be considered a single intervention in the text, <add> and <del> can be grouped inside <subst> (substition).

Where deletions in the source text cannot be read with confidence, <unclear> should be used with the @reason attribute indicating that the difficulty of transcription is due to deletion. See Module 6: Primary Sources, section 4.1.