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3.1.1. The Title Statement #

The title statement minimally lists the title of the electronic text in a <title> element. Next to the title, it provides room to list detailed information about the persons or institutions responsible for different aspects of the realisation of the electronic text.

• <title>: contains the title for the electronic text
• <author>: contains the name of an/the author(s) of the electronic text
• <editor>: contains the name of an/the editor(s) of the electronic text
• <sponsor>: specifies the name of a sponsoring organisation or institution for the realisation of the electronic text
• <funder>: specifies the name of a party responsible for the funding of the realisation of the electronic text
• <principal>: supplies the name of the principal researcher responsible for the creation of an electronic text
• <respStmt> (statement of responsibility): supplies a statement of responsibility for the intellectual content of the electronic text, where the specialised elements for authors, editors, etc. do not suffice or do not apply

Although the electronic text can be named anything, often its title will reflect the title of the source text (if any). In order to point out the distinction, it is advised to explicate the status of the electronic text in a phrase like “an digital edition,” “an electronic transcription,” or the like. The TEI Guidelines strongly advise to separate the title of an electronic text from the name of the file in which it is saved, as the latter is likely subject to change.

All elements inside <titleStmt> may occur as often as needed, in order to list all (sub)titles, authors, editors, or others responsible for the realisation of the electronic text. For example, the <titleStmt> section for our example could be expanded as follows:

Notice the specific form of the <respStmt> statements of additional responsibilities. Each responsibility statement should contain a proper name inside <name>, identifying the responsible party, and describe the responsibility inside a <resp> element. When one person or institution has more than one responsibilities, these may be enumerated in a number of <resp> elements.

The example above lists the translator among the “additional responsibilities.” However, this can be understood as a kind of editor role, and hence encoded as <editor>. In order to distinguish between different kind of editorial responsibilities, the <editor> element has a specific @role attribute, whose values can include "translator", "editor", "compiler", "illustrator", etc. Likewise, the author of the preface could be considered a kind of editor and encoded as such.

When encoding an electronic text, you might want to identify who is responsible for certain textual phenomena, such as additions, deletions, abbreviations and their solutions, annotations, etc. Many of the tags for such phenomena have a @resp attribute, whose value should refer to an element formally identified elsewhere. Of course, the <titleStmt> provides an excellent location to provide such formal identification codes, by making use of the global @xml:id attribute. This way, the textual phenomena in a transcription can be associated directly with both the name of the responsible parties, and their roles in realising the electronic text.

The example above could thus be rephrased as follows:

These identifications allow the encoder to distinguish, for example, between an editorial annotation and a note by the translator in the text:

3.1.2. The Edition Statement #

The edition statement provides detailed information about the edition of the electronic text (if applicable). Similar to editions of printed texts, electronic texts may be substantially revised in different versions. Somehow closer to the world of software programs, an edition of an electronic text can be compared to the “release” of a piece of software. For an electronic text, the alteration of its contents, or addition/expansion/removal of substantive (types of) meta-information could qualify a new version of an electronic text as a new edition.

The <editionStmt> element can contain:

• <p> | <edition>: a description of the edition; either as loose prose paragraphs (<p>), or in a specific <edition> element
• <respStmt>: contains descriptions of responsibilities specific to the current edition

The edition may be described either loosely in one or more paragraphs (<p>), or in a more specific <edition> element. One of both (but not both) must be present. Notice that only one <edition> element may be used. When applicable, responsible parties and their specific responsibilities for this edition can be listed inside a <respStmt> element, identifying both the responsible party (<name>) and its responsibilities (<resp>).

The TEI Guidelines state that

[a]n edition statement is optional for the first release of a computer file; it is mandatory for each later release, though this requirement cannot be enforced by the parser.

If, for example, the digital edition of this version of The Wild Ass’s Skin builds on an existing electronic edition, but adds a substantive new category of annotations by Melissa Terras, this could be reflected in the <editionStmt> as follows:

Notice how we can’t formally identify Melissa anymore, at least not with the same identification code she received for the <principal> element, earlier in the header. Since @xml:id values must be unique within a document, there are two options for identifying her in this role:

• provide a different identification code for the @xml:id attribute
• move the @xml:id identification from the <principal> element inside <titleStmt> to the <name> element inside the <editionStmt>

3.1.3. File Size #

The <extent> section of the file description provides an analogue to the bibliographical indication of the size of printed books. It allows the encoder to express the size of the electronic text, be it in terms of its carrier medium (bits, bytes, number of disks / DVDs), or in terms of its contents (number of words/sentences). In this way, the TEI Guidelines aim to offer some way of formalising this often fluid notion of size in digital terms. The <extent> element may contain a loose prose description of the amount and units of size.

For example, the size of our example text could be encoded in a number of ways:

3.1.4. The Publication Statement #

The publication statement (<publicationStmt>) is the second mandatory section of the file description. It provides details about the publication status of the electronic text, in one or more of following subsections:

• <p> | <publisher> | <distributor> | <authority>: description of publication details; either by means of loose prose paragraphs (<p>), or an identification of the publisher (<publisher>), the distributor (<distributor>), or other authority (<authority>) for making the electronic text available
• <pubPlace>: the place of publication for the electronic text
• <address>: the address of the publishing body of the electronic text
• <idno>: a standardised bibliographic identification code for the electronic text
• <availability>: a statement about the availability and terms of use of the electronic text
• <date>: the publication date of the electronic text

The publication statement can either contain a loose prose description in one or more paragraphs (<p>), or any of the other elements (although the TEI Guidelines recommend to use at least <publisher>, <distributor>, or <authority>).

The element names are quite transparent, and analogous to the labels often present in traditional bibliographic descriptions of printed works. Most of them can contain plain text and phrase-level elements, apart from <address>, <availability>, and <idno>. The <address> element must contain at least one <addrLine> element, describing a single address line, or more specific address elements like <street>, <name>, <postCode>, or <postBox>. Information on availability and terms of use inside <availability> must be given in at least one paragraph (<p>), or a <licence> element, which can point to or contain a description of the formal license conditions. The availability of the electronic text can be typed formally in a @status attribute on <availability>, with three possible values:

• "free": the text is freely available
• "restricted": the text is not freely available
• "unknown": the status of the text is unknown

The <idno> element can be used to provide a formal identification code in some kind of classification scheme. The code itself must be given in plain text; the applicable identification scheme can be identified in the value of the @type attribute. Suggested values are "ISBN" (International Standard Book Number), "LCCN" (Library of Congress Control Number), "DOI" (Digital Object Identifier), etc. The <date> element can give the date in free prose. Additionally, for processing purposes, the use of the @when attribute is recommended. Its value should be a formal representation of the date, most commonly in the form yyyy-mm-dd.

The <publicationStmt> for our sample text could look as follows:

Notice how the <availability> description contains a <licence> element, whose @target attribute is pointing to an online description of the licensing scheme.

3.1.5. The Series Statement #

If the electronic text is published in a series, this series can be described in the <seriesStmt> element. It may contain following elements:

• <p> | <title>: a description of the series, either in a loose prose description (<p>), or by naming the series inside <title>
• <idno>: a standardised bibliographic identification code for the series in which the electronic text is published
• <respStmt>: statement of responsibility for the realisation of the series

The series statement may either be given in loose prose inside paragraphs (<p>), or must at least name the title of the series (<title>). Additionally, an identification code for the series, and/or for the electronic text within the series, can be given inside <idno> with an appropriate value for its @type attribute. Responsible parties for the realisation of the series can be listed in (a) <respStmt> element(s).

For example, our sample electronic text could be published in a series that could be described as follows:

Notice how the second <idno> element is used to identify the electronic text within the series. The @type attribute indicates here that the identification refers to the sequence number of the instalments in the series. It could, of course, indicate other reference schemes as well (such as volumes, issues, ...).

3.1.6. The Notes Statement #

The <notesStmt> section of the file description is reserved for additional information that is not covered in the general bibliographic description. Each piece of additional information should be encoded in a separate <note>:

3.1.7. The Source Description #

The source description inside <sourceDesc> is the third required subsection of the file description. It should contain one of following elements:

• <p> | <bibl> | <biblStruct> | <biblFull> | <listBibl>: the bibliographic description of the source text; either as a loose prose description in a paragraph (<p>), a formal bibliographic description (either loose (<bibl>), structured (<biblStruct>), or exhaustive (<biblFull>)), or a list of bibliographic references (<listBibl>)

The source text of the electronic text can be described either as loose prose in one or more paragraphs (<p>), or by means of a more specialised bibliographical element (<bibl>, <biblStruct>, <biblFull>, <listBibl>).

Of course, not all texts are derived from a material source text. In fact, lots of TEI documents are encoded from scratch, just like regular text files produced with text processing software. For such texts, a kind of “dummy” statement can be given in a paragraph inside <sourceDesc>. For example, the <sourceDesc> element of this TBE tutorial module (a native TEI electronic document) looks as follows:

If possible, however, it is recommended to bibliographically describe the material source document using a more specialised TEI element for bibliographic description. The <bibl>, <biblStruct>, and <biblFull> elements share a common set of allowed child elements, but differ in their degree of completeness and strictness. The most informal of the specialised bibliographical elements is <bibl>, which allows a prose-like bibliographic description, possibly interspersed with bibliographic elements, the most important of which are:

Responsibilities:

• <author>: the author of the source text
• <editor>: the editor of the source text
• <distributor>: the distributing agency of the source text
• <publisher>: the publishing agency of the source text
• <funder>: the funding agency of the source text
• <principal>: the principal researcher responsible for the realisation of the source text
• <sponsor>: the sponsoring agency of the source text
• <respStmt>: other responsibilities for the source text

Edition:

• <title>: the title of the source text
• <date>: the publication date of the source text
• <pubPlace>: the publication place of the source text
• <edition>: the edition of the source text
• <series>: the series in which the source text was published
• <idno>: a bibliographic reference code for the source text
• <biblScope>: the scope of the bibliographic reference of the source text
• <extent>: the size of the source text

The <sourceDesc> for our example could look as follows:

... or with a <bibl> element:

... more formally:

The same information can be structured more rigorously using the <biblStruct> element. A structured bibliography may contain the same bibliographic elements, but structured in a more explicit way on three possible levels:

• <analytic>: bibliographic description of an item published within a monograph or journal:
  • <title>: the title of the article or contribution
  • <author>: the author of the article or contribution
  • <editor>: the editor of the article or contribution
  • <respStmt>: other responsibilities for the article or contribution
• <monogr>: bibliographic description of an item published as an independent item:
  • <author>: the author of the monograph
  • <editor>: the editor of the monograph
  • <respStmt>: other responsibilities for the monograph
  • <title>: the title of the monograph
  • <imprint>: information regarding the publication of the monograph: <biblScope>, <distributor>, <pubPlace>, <publisher>, <date>
  • <biblScope>: the bibliographic scope of the monograph (volume, issue)
  • <note>: additional bibliographical notes for the monograph
• <series>: bibliographic description of the series in which a work has been published:
  • <title>: the series’ title
  • <editor>: the series’ editor
  • <respStmt>: other responsibilities for the series
  • <biblScope>: the bibliographic scope for the bibliographic item within the series

Our example could be elaborated as follows:

The <biblFull> element requires the most extensive bibliographic description for the source of the electronic text, organised in the same categories as the file description of the electronic text itself (without the <sourceDesc> section, of course): a mandatory title statement (<fileDesc>), optional edition statement (<editionStmt>), indication of the size (<extent>), mandatory publication statement (<publicationStmt>), series statement (<seriesStmt>), and possibly additional bibliographic notes (<notesStmt>). As this level of detail exceeds the aims of this introductory tutorial, you are kindly referred to the <biblFull> reference section of the TEI Guidelines for full reference and examples.

If an electronic text is derived from more than one source text, these can all be described with the desired granularity using <bibl>, <biblStruct>, and <biblFull>. When doing so, <listBibl> provides a convenient way to group these bibliographic descriptions inside <sourceDesc>.

Although our example text is derived from only one source, following example illustrates how <listBibl> can be used:

3.1.8. Summary #

The file description (<fileDesc>) is the first and sole mandatory section of the TEI header. It contains a description of the electronic text, in a mandatory title statement (<titleStmt>), a description of the specific edition of the electronic text is published (<editionStmt>), the file size (<extent>), a mandatory description of publication details of the electronic text (<publicationStmt>), a description of the series in which the electronic text is published (<seriesStmt>), additional bibliographic notes (<notesStmt>), and a mandatory bibliographic description of the electronic text’s material source text (<sourceDesc>).

When all pieces are put together, the file description for our example can look as follows:

3.2.1. The Editorial Practice Declaration #

The editorial policy used when marking up the electronic text can be documented in <editorialDecl>, either as loose prose in one or more paragraphss, or in minimally one specific element. Following elements are most common:

• <correction>: describes if / how / when corrections have been made in the text. A @status attribute can indicate the degree of correction applied to the text ("low", "medium", "high", or "unknown"); a @method attribute can formalise whether corrections have been applied silently ("silent") or explicitly ("markup").
• <normalization>: describes if / how / when the text has been normalised. A @source attribute can point to the description of the authority for the normalisations; a @method attribute can formalise whether normalisations have been applied silently ("silent") or explicitly ("markup").
• <quotation>: describes how quotation marks in the original have been treated in the electronic text. A @marks attribute can record the degree to which quotation marks have been retained in the electronic text ("none", "some", or "all").
• <hyphenation>: describes how hyphenated text in the original has been treated in the electronic text. An @eol attribute can record the degree to which end-of-line hyphenation has been retained in the electronic text ("none", "some", "all", or "hard" (only hard end-of-line hyphenation has been retained)).
• <interpretation>: describes what interpretive information has been added to the text, apart from the transcription

All of these elements must contain at least one paragraph (<p>) containing the description.

For our example, the <editorialDecl> subsection could look as follows:

3.2.2. The Project Description #

The aims and purposes for which the electronic text have been created can be given in <projectDesc>, as well as any other information regarding this endeavour. The structure of <projectDesc> is simple: it consists simply of one or more paragraphs (<p>).

For example:

3.2.3. The Tagging Declaration #

The XML elements that have been used to mark up the text can be formally documented in the <tagsDecl> subsection of the encoding description. Following aspects can be documented:

• <namespace>: formally identifies the namespace to which the XML elements belong that are documented in its <tagUsage> children
• <rendition>: declares a rendering style for one or more XML elements in the electronic text

Inside <tagsDecl>, the XML tags occurring within an electronic text can be documented with <tagUsage> elements, grouped within a <namespace> element. The <namespace> element must include a formal reference to the namespace of these XML elements in its @name attribute. For any default TEI text, this namespace reference should point to the http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0 namespace definition. Each distinct XML element occurring within the <text> part of the electronic text should be documented in its own <tagUsage> element, providing a prose description for the use of this element in the electronic text. The element name must be provided in the @gi (generic identifier) attribute. Additionally, the number of occurrences can be recorded in an @occurs attribute, and the number of occurrences with a unique identification code can be given in a @withId attribute. A @rendition attribute can point to a standard rendering style for this element in the source text:

Of course, if your electronic document contains elements from other namespaces, these should be documented within their dedicated <namespace> element. Notice how the @rendition attribute points to the definition of a rendering style somewhere else in the document. The tagging declaration is the place for such definitions as well, by means of different <rendition> elements for each distinct rendition style. The description of rendition styles can be done either as a loose prose description, with an idiosyncratic hand-crafted formal vocabulary, or make use of existing styling languages such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or XSL FO (eXtensible Stylesheet Language: Formatting Objects). The @scheme attribute defines one of these styles: "css" (CSS), "xslfo" (XSL FO), "free" (informal free text description), or "other" (any other formal rendition scheme). The contents of the <rendition> element then can provide the formal rendition rules expressed in any of the schemes identified. For example, the styles “division” and “paragraph” can be defined in terms of CSS rules as follows:

Notice how the @xml:id value of the <rendition> elements is used to refer to these definitions with the @rendition attribute. This is a global attribute, that can occur on any TEI element, so general <rendition> declarations can be used for individual (groups of) elements as well. Have a look, for example, at the main title on the title page:

Figure 2. The title page of the example text.

...appearing as large red text in small caps, this title can be encoded as follows:

3.2.4. The Reference System Declaration #

Any reference schemes that are used in the electronic text can be declared in the <refsDecl> subsection of the encoding description. They can be defined either as loose prose descriptions in one or more paragraph (<p>), or with specialised elements. Because of the complexity of these specialised elements, this tutorial section only treats the informal prose description.

The reference system declaration may be used to document any reference system used in the electronic text, for example the numbering schemes in @n attributes of certain elements, the composition of @xml:id values for certain elements, and so on.

For example, the numbering scheme of paragraphs, and identification codes of chapters could be documented as follows in the example text:

3.2.5. The Classification Declaration #

If you want to classify the electronic text using some kind of classification scheme or taxonomy, this taxonomy should be defined inside the <classDecl> subsection of the encoding description. The actual classification of the text is done in another part of the TEI header (see section 3.3.3), but it must point to one of the taxonomies defined here. The classification schemes used in the electronic document must each be defined in a dedicated element:

• <taxonomy>: defines a typology used to classify texts

The <taxonomy> element can either refer to an existing classification scheme, or define an own classification scheme, and should be formally identified in an @xml:id attribute. If the taxonomy refers to an existing classification scheme, this should be described in a <bibl> element. The library record for our example text contains a reference to the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) scheme (see code 082 in figure 1). If we want to include this classification code, and the Library of Congress Subject Headings in our electronic version of the text, these schemes should be referred to in a <taxonomy> element as follows:

If the classification scheme is less universal, or if you want to roll your own, the <taxonomy> element can be used as well. Apart from an optional bibliographical reference in <bibl>, the classification categories can be defined in separate <category> elements, each with their own @xml:id identification code. The category can be described in a <catDesc> element. As classification categories can nest, it is possible to define hierarchical classification systems. For example, it could make sense to classify this novel in the terms of the Balzac’s own plan of the Comédie Humaine, which the author envisaged as the encompassing series for his complete prose oeuvre:

In this example, a separate taxonomy is created for Balzac’s Comédie Humaine, indicated with the identification code "BCS". It consists of 6 subcategories, each in its own <category> element, and a more detailed value for its @xml:id attribute. Some of these categories contain even further categories. These categories can be referred to in the actual text classification further in the TEI header (see section 3.3.3).

3.2.6. The Metrical Notation Declaration (available in the verse module) #

When the TEI module verse is included in the TEI schema, the encoding description contains an additional element for the declaration of the metrical notation used in the analysis of poetry: <metDecl>.

The metrical notation may be defined either informally, in one or more paragraphs (<p>), or formally using one or more <metSym> elements. An informal declaration may look as follows:

This system can be declared more formally via one or more <metSym> (metrical notation symbol) elements. Each metrical symbol to be used in an analysis in the electronic text must be defined in the @value attribute, and described in the text contents of a <metSym> element. The previous example could be formalised as follows:

After having declared the notation system for metrical analysis in the header, you can use this notation system for metrical analyses in the electronic text. For example, if you consider following section in the text of The Wild Ass’s Skin a poem:

You can enrich the transcription with a metrical analysis by means of the specific @met attribute. It should contain the symbols for the metrical notation system you declared in the <metDecl> subsection of the encoding description:

3.2.7. The Variant Encoding (available in the textcrit module) #

When the TEI module textcrit is included in the TEI schema, the encoding description contains an additional element for the declaration of the method used to indicate text-critical variants: <variantEncoding>.

The <variantEncoding> element is an empty element with two mandatory attributes. With the @method attribute, you must identify one of three methods for the encoding of text-critical variants in the electronic text:

• "location-referenced": apparatus entries are anchored to identified locations in the text
• "double-end-point": apparatus entries are anchored to the precise start and end point of the lemma in a base text
• "parallel-segmentation": apparatus entries contain all text variants as alternative readings

For a full reference of these systems, see chapter 12 Critical Apparatus of the TEI Guidelines.

A second aspect that must be documented for the system used for the encoding of text-critical variants, is the location of the text-critical apparatus. This must be done in the @location attribute, with two possible values:

• "internal": the text-critical apparatus is encoded within the running text
• "external": the text-critical apparatus is encoded outside the running text

If we wanted to create a digital text-critical edition of The Wild Ass’s Skin by collating different editions of the novel, we should include the textcrit module in our TEI schema and declare the system used to represent the textual variation in <variantEncoding>. The following declaration, for example, specifies that the textual variation is encoded in the running text, using the "parallel-segmentation" method:

For a full treatment of recording textual variation in critical editions, see Module 7: Critical Editing.

3.2.8. Summary #

The encoding description (<encodingDesc>) is the second section of the TEI header. It describes the relationship between the electronic text and its source text, either as loose prose in one or more paragraphs, or in minimally one of more specific elements. Aspects that can be documented are the editorial practice (<editorialDecl>), the project context in which the electronic text was realised (<projectDesc>), a declaration of all XML elements used in the encoding (<tagsDecl>), declaration of reference systems used in the encoding (<refsDecl>), and a declaration of any classification schemes used to classify the text (<classDecl>). When the verse TEI module is included in the TEI schema, the system for metrical analysis can be declared in the <metDecl> element. When the TEI schema includes the textcrit TEI module for the encoding of text-critical variants, the system used for variant encoding may be documented in <variantEncoding>.

In the previous sections, we added the encoding description for our electronic edition of The Wild Ass’s Skin, describing the editorial principles, the aim and purposes of the encoding, the different XML elements, their use and rendition, the system(s) that will be used to classify the text (further in the header), the notation system for metrical analyses of poems in the text, and the method of recording textual variation for the text-critical edition. This amounts to following encoding description:

3.3.1. Creation #

If there are any details worth recording about the actual place or time of creation of the source text, this can be done in the <creation> element, as a loose prose description. This may be useful when the text was created long before its publication, as an exact situation in place and time can be important to certain types of research (e.g., study of (diachronic) linguistic variation). It is worth pointing out the difference between the use of the <creation> element, for details about the creation of a source text; and the <sourceDesc> element, for bibliographic details about the publication of the source text.

For example:

3.3.2. Language Usage #

The <langUsage> subsection of the profile description provides room to describe the different languages used in the text. Each language must be described in a distinct <language> element. It may contain a prose description of the language (or dialect), and must provide a formal identification code for this language in the @ident (identifier) attribute. When appropriate, the distribution of this language over the text contents can be stated as a percentage in a @usage attribute. Section vi.1. Language identification of the TEI Guidelines offers recommendations for the constructions of the formal language identification codes for the @ident attribute. It is important that these codes correspond to the values of the @xml:lang attributes elsewhere in the electronic text to identify phrases in that language.

For example, the languages used in the English translation of The Wild Ass’s Skin could be defined as follows:

3.3.3. Text Classification #

The contents of the text can be classified according to one or more classification schemes in the <textClass> subsection of the profile description. It can be done by means of three specific elements:

• <keywords>: a list of keywords in a given keyword list
• <classCode>: a classification code in a given classification scheme
• <catRef>: a list of pointers to specific categories in a given taxonomy

In general, these elements allow for two kinds of classification:

• reference to an external classification scheme, which uses either subject headings (<keywords>), or classification codes (<classCode>)
• reference to specific categories in an internally defined taxonomy (<catRef>)

The <keywords> and <classCode> elements fulfil a similar role: they allow you to use classification categories defined in external classification schemes. If such a scheme defines categories in terms of subject headings, the <keywords> element should be used to refer to those keywords; if the scheme defines categories in terms of classification codes, the <classCode> element should be used. The classification scheme must be identified in the @scheme attribute, which contains a pointer to its declaration in a <taxonomy> element inside the <classDecl> subsection of the encoding description (see section 3.2.5).

The <keywords> element must list the terms either in a series of <term> elements, or make use of a <list> structure. For example, The Wild Ass’s Skin can be classified in terms of the Library of Congress Subject Headings scheme as follows:

...and / or in terms of the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme like this (see code 082 in the library record above):

When you have defined your own classification system in the encoding description (see section 3.2.5), you can refer to one of its categories by means of the <catRef> element. This is an empty element that must point to the category definitions with a @target attribute. This is basically a list of pointers to the @xml:id attributes of the relevant categories in one of the <taxonomy> elements defined in the <profileDesc> section of the TEI header. If the reference to the category does not suffice, the @scheme attribute may point to the declaration of the relevant taxonomy containing the category. For example, The Wild Ass’s Skin could be classified using the Balzac-specific classification scheme declared above as follows:

3.3.4. Document Hands #

When the transcr TEI module for the transcription of primary sources is included in the TEI schema, the profile description contains an additional element for the declaration of the different hands occurring in the document <handNotes>.

Each hand that occurs in the source text can be identified in a <handNote> element, containing a prose description of its characteristics. It should be identified with an @xml:id attribute, and can contain additional attributes for formalised documentation of the script or writing style (@script), writing medium (@medium), and an indication of the prominence of this hand in the text (@scope). If the document hand can be ascribed to a specific person, this person can be identified in the @scribe attribute.

For example, the <handNotes> element could be used to identify the hand in which the previous owner of the book has added some annotations (supposed we wanted to transcribe these as well), as well as the Arabic script in this example:

Figure 3. A page with Arabic script.

3.3.5. Summary #

The profile description (<profileDesc>) is the third section of the TEI header. It describes all kinds of non-bibliographic information about an electronic text, either as loose prose in one or more paragraphs, or in minimally one of more specific elements. Aspects relating to the creation of the text can be documented in <creation>, the languages used in the document can be declared in <langUsage>, and a text classification can be provided in <textClass>. When the transcr TEI module for the representation of primary sources is included in the TEI schema, the different hands occurring in the source text can be formally documented in a <handNotes> element.

With the information about the text’s creation, languages, and classification in place, the <profileDesc> section of the TEI header for our sample text could look as follows: