Overall, texts are divided into front matter, the body, and back matter, tagged respectively front, body, and back. Front and back matter are distinct only by virtue of their location: they can contain exactly the same kinds of material. The overall structure of a typical book, for example, would be something like this:
<text> <front> <!-- front matter here: title page, dedication, preface, etc. ... --> </front> <body> <!-- main body of edition here ... --> </body> <back> <!-- back matter here: index, bibliography, etc.... --> </back> </text>
Within the body, or within the front and back matter, text may be subdivided into text divisions (parts, chapters, sections; act, scene; canto, stanza; etc.). For such divisions, the single element div should be used; subsections are tagged with nested div elements. The type attribute may be used to indicate that the division has a particular name or type; later divisions will take the same type value unless a different value is specified. Within a text division, paragraphs or paragraph-level elements (e.g. note, list) may occur.
<div type='Section' n=1> <p>The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.</p></div> <div n=2><p>The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.</p></div> <div n=3><p>This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.</p></div>
In cases where text divisions have no headings, or have only headings consisting of their type value and a number, no heading need be given, as shown above. If desired, however, the heading may be given explicitly:
<div type='Section' n=1> <head>Section 1.</head> <p>The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.</p></div> <div n=2><head>Section 2.</head> <p>The transportation ...</p></div> <div n=3><head>Section 3.</head> <p>This article shall be inoperative unless ...</p></div>
The headings in the preceding example are fixed text (the word Section followed by the value of the n attribute), which any moderately intelligent SGML software could generate mechanically. In general, document management is more convenient, and results are more consistent, if such material is not transcribed as part of the text, but is generated by software when the text is displayed or printed. Inconsistency in the source, of course, may be of interest, and if so it should be captured explicitly.
The TEI encoding scheme defines specialized tags for transcribing title pages, in order to ensure that processing software can easily locate and identify the author, title, and date of the document as given on its title page. The title page itself, and its major component parts, are illustrated in this example:
<titlePage> <docTitle> <titlePart type='main'>The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt</titlePart> <titlePart type='sub'>With a special introduction and explanatory notes by President Roosevelt</titlePart> <titlePart type='vol number'>Volume Two</titlePart> <titlePart type='vol title'> The Year of Crisis 1933</titlePart> </docTitle> <docImprint> <publisher>Random House</publisher> <pubPlace>New York</pubPlace> <docDate>1938</docDate> </docImprint> </titlePage>
The titlePart element is used both for the different parts of the document title (as shown) and also for miscellaneous parts of the title page which are neither document title, nor document author, nor imprint information.