11 Representation of Primary Sources

Inhalt

This chapter defines a module intended for use in the representation of primary sources, such as manuscripts or other written materials. Section 11.1 Digital Facsimiles provides elements for the encoding of digital facsimiles or images of such materials, while the remainder of the chapter discusses ways of encoding detailed transcriptions of such materials. It is expected that this module will also be useful in the preparation of critical editions, but the module defined here is distinct from that defined in chapter 12 Critical Apparatus, and may be used independently of it. Detailed metadata relating to primary sources of any kind may be recorded using the elements defined by the manuscript description module discussed in chapter 10 Manuscript Description, but again the present module may be used independently if such data is not required.

It should be noted that, as elsewhere in these Guidelines, this chapter places more emphasis on the problems of representing the textual components of a document than on those relating to the description of the document's physical characteristics such as the carrier medium or physical construction. These aspects, of particular importance in codicology and the bibliographic study of incunables, are touched on in the chapter on Manuscript Description (10 Manuscript Description) and also form the subject of ongoing work in the TEI Physical Bibliography workgroup.

Although this chapter discusses manuscript materials more frequently than other forms of written text, most of the recommendations presented are equally applicable mutatis mutandis in the encoding of printed matter or indeed any form of written source, including monumental inscriptions. Similarly, where in the following descriptions terms such as ‘scribe’, ‘author’, ‘editor’, ‘annotator’ or ‘corrector’ are used, these may be re-interpreted in terms more appropriate to the medium being transcribed. In printed material, for example, the ‘compositor’ plays a role analogous to the ‘scribe’, while in an authorial manuscript, the author and the scribe are the same person.

11.1 Digital Facsimiles

These Guidelines are mostly concerned with the preparation of digital texts, in which a pre-existing text is transcribed or otherwise converted into character form, and marked up in XML. However, it is also very common practice to make a different form of ‘digital text’, which is instead composed of digital images of the original source, typically one per page, or other written surface. We call such a resource a digital facsimile. A digital facsimile may, in the simplest case, just consist of a collection of images, with some metadata to identify them and the source materials portrayed. It may sometimes contain a variety of images of the same source pages, for example of different resolutions, or of different kinds. Such a collection may form part of any kind of document, for example a commentary of a codicological or paeleographic nature, where there is a need to align explanatory text with image data. And it may also be complemented by a transcribed or encoded version of the original source, which may be linked to the page images. In this section we present elements designed to support these various possibilities and discuss the associated mechanisms provided by these Guidelines.

When this module is included in a schema, the class att.global is extended to include a new pointer attribute facs:
  • att.global.facs groups elements corresponding with all or part of an image, because they contain an alternative representation of it, typically but not necessarily a transcription of it.
    facs (facsimile) points to all or part of an image which corresponds with the content of the element.
This attribute may be used to associate any element in a transcribed text with an image of it, by means of the usual URI pointing mechanism.
If a digital text contains one image per page or column (or similar unit), and no more complex mapping between text and image is envisaged, then the facs attribute may be used to point directly to a graphic resource:
<TEI>
 <teiHeader>
<!--...-->
 </teiHeader>
 <text>
  <pb facs="page1.png"/>
<!-- text contained on page 1 is encoded here -->
  <pb facs="page2.png"/>
<!-- text contained on page 2 is encoded here -->
 </text>
</TEI>
By convention, this encoding indicates that the image indicated by facs attribute represents the whole of the text following the pb (pagebreak) element, up to the next pb element. Any convenient milestone element (see further 3.10.3 Milestone Elements) could be used in the same way; for example if the images represent individual columns, the cb element might be used. Though simple, this method has some drawbacks. It does not scale well to more complex cases where, for example, the images do not correspond exactly with transcribed pages, or where the intention is to align specific marked up elements with detailed images, or parts of images. And it makes the management of the information about the images more difficult by scattering references to them through the file. Nevertheless, this solution may be adequate for many straightforward ‘digital library’ applications.

The recommended approach to encoding facsimiles is instead to use the facs attribute in conjunction with the elements facsimile, surface, and zone, which are also provided by this module. These elements make it possible to accommodate multiple images of each page, as well as to record arbitrary planar coordinates of textual elements on any kind of written surface and to link such elements with digital facsimile images of them. Typical applications include the provision of full text search in ‘digital facsimile editions’, and ways of annotating graphics, for example so as to identify individuals appearing in a group portraits and link them to data about the person represented.

The following elements are used to represent components of a digital facsimile:
  • facsimile contains a representation of some written source in the form of a set of images rather than as transcribed or encoded text.
  • surface defines a written surface in terms of a rectangular coordinate space, optionally grouping one or more graphic representations of that space, and rectangular zones of interest within it.
  • zone defines a rectangular area contained within a surface element.
The facsimile element is used to represent a digital facsimile. It appears within a TEI document along with, or instead of, the text element introduced in section 4 Default Text Structure. When this module is selected therefore, a legal TEI document may thus comprise any of the following:-
  • a TEI Header and a text element
  • a TEI Header and a facsimile element
  • a TEI Header, a facsimile element, and a text element

Like the text element, a facsimile element may also contain an optional front or back element, used in the same way as described in sections 4.5 Front Matter and 4.7 Back Matter.

In the simplest case, a facsimile just contains a series of graphic elements, each of which identifies an image file:
<facsimile>
 <graphic url="page1.png"/>
 <graphic url="page2.png"/>
 <graphic url="page3.png"/>
 <graphic url="page4.png"/>
</facsimile>
If desired, the binaryObject element described in 3.9 Graphics and other non-textual components (or any other element from the model.graphicLike class) can be used instead of a graphic.
In this simple case, the four page images are understood to represent the complete facsimile, and are to be read in the sequence given. Suppose, however, that the second page of this particular work is available both as an ordinary photograph and as an infra-red image, or in two different resolutions. The surface element may be used to indicate that there are two image files corresponding with the same area of the work:
<facsimile>
 <graphic url="page1.png"/>
 <surface>
  <graphic url="page2-highRes.png"/>
  <graphic url="page2-lowRes.png"/>
 </surface>
 <graphic url="page3.png"/>
 <graphic url="page4.png"/>
</facsimile>

The surface element provides a way of indicating that the two images of page2 represent the same physical surface within the source material. A surface might be a sheet of paper or parchment, a face of a monument, a billboard, a membrane of a scroll, or indeed any two-dimensional surface, of any size.

The actual dimensions of the object represented are not documented by the surface element; instead, the surface is located within an abstract coordinate space, which is defined by the following attributes, supplied by the att.coordinated class:
  • att.coordinated elements which can be positioned within a two dimensional coordinate system.
    ulxgives the x coordinate value for the upper left corner of a rectangular space.
    ulygives the y coordinate value for the upper left corner of a rectangular space.
    lrxgives the x coordinate value for the lower right corner of a rectangular space.
    lrygives the y coordinate value for the lower right corner of a rectangular space.

The same coordinate space is used for a surface and for all of its child elements.33 It may be most convenient to derive a coordinate space from a digital image of the surface in question such that each pixel in the image corresponds with a whole number of units (typically 1) in the coordinate space. In other cases it may be more convenient to use units such as millimetres; in neither case is any specific mapping to the physical dimensions of the object represented implied.

Each surface can contain one or more zone elements, each of which represents a region or bounding box defined in terms of the same coordinate space as that of its parent surface element. A zone may be rectangular or non-rectangular: a rectangular zone is defined by a sequence of four co-ordinates in the same way as a surface; a non-rectangular zone is defined using the attribute points, which provides a sequence of co-ordinates, each of which specifies a point on the line surrounding the zone.
  • att.coordinated elements which can be positioned within a two dimensional coordinate system.
    pointsidentifies a non-rectangular area within the bounding box specified by the other attributes by specifying a series of pairs of numbers, each of which gives the x,y coordinates of a point on a line defining the non-rectangular area.
34

A zone may be used to define any region of interest, such as a detail or illustration, or some part of the surface which is to be aligned with a particular text element. As we have seen, a surface will usually correspond with the whole of a written surface. A zone, by contrast, defines any arbitrary area of interest using the same coordinate system. It might be bigger or smaller than its parent surface, or might overlap its boundaries. The only constraint is that it must be defined using the same coordinate system.

When an image of some kind is supplied within either a zone or a surface, the implication is that the whole of the image represents the zone or surface containing it. In the simple case therefore, we might imagine a surface defining a page, within which there is a graphic representing the whole of that page, and a number of zones defining parts of the page, each with its own graphic, each representing a part of the page. If however one of those graphics actually represents an area larger than the page (for example to include a binding or the surface of a desk on which the page rests), then it will be enclosed by a zone with coordinates larger than those of the parent surface.

Note that this mechanism does not provide any way of addressing a non-rectangular area, nor of coping with distortions introduced by perspective or parallax; if this is needed, the more powerful mechanisms provided by the Standard Vector Graphics (SVG) language should be used to define an overlay, as further discussed in 16.4.3 A Three-way Alignment.

For example, consider the following figure:
Relation
between page, surface, and zone
Abbildung 2. Relation between page, surface, and zone
This is an image of a two page spread from a manuscript in the Badische Landesbibliothek, Karlsruhe. We have no information as to the dimensions of the original object, but the low resolution image displayed here contains 500 pixels horizontally and 321 pixels vertically. For convenience, we might map each pixel to one cell of the coordinate space.35
The coordinates of the surface (that is, the area of the image which represents the written two page spread) can then be specified in terms of this coordinate space, simply by counting pixels in the image. The left corner of the two page spread appears 50 units from the left of the image and 20 units from the top, while the bottom right corner of the spread appears 400 units from the left of the image, and 280 units from the top. We therefore define the written surface within this image as follows:
<facsimile>
 <surface
   ulx="50"
   uly="20"
   lrx="400"
   lry="280">

<!-- ... -->
 </surface>
</facsimile>
To describe the whole image, we will also need to define a zone of interest which represents an area larger than this surface. Using the same coordinate system as that defined for the surface, its coordinates are 0,0,500,321. This zone of interest can be defined by a zone element, within which we can place the uncropped graphic:
<facsimile>
 <surface
   ulx="50"
   uly="20"
   lrx="400"
   lry="280">

  <zone
    ulx="0"
    uly="0"
    lrx="500"
    lry="321">

   <graphic
     url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Handschrift.karlsruhe.blb.jpg"/>

  </zone>
 </surface>
</facsimile>

If desired, the binaryObject element described in 3.9 Graphics and other non-textual components (or any other element from the model.graphicLike class) may be used instead of a graphic element.

The desc element may also be used within either surface or zone to provide some further information about the area being defined. For example, since the image in this example contains two pages, it might be preferable to define two distinct surfaces, one for each page, including its illuminated margins. In this case, each surface must specify a bounding box which encloses the appropriate page, as well as defining the zone for the graphic itself:
<facsimile>
 <surface
   ulx="50"
   uly="20"
   lrx="210"
   lry="280">

  <desc>left hand page</desc>
  <zone
    ulx="0"
    uly="0"
    lrx="500"
    lry="321">

   <graphic
     url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Handschrift.karlsruhe.blb.jpg"/>

  </zone>
 </surface>
 <surface
   ulx="240"
   uly="25"
   lrx="400"
   lry="280">

  <desc>right hand page</desc>
  <zone
    ulx="0"
    uly="0"
    lrx="500"
    lry="321">

   <graphic
     url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Handschrift.karlsruhe.blb.jpg"/>

  </zone>
 </surface>
</facsimile>
In addition to acting as a container for graphic elements, zone elements may also be used to select parts of each surface for analytical purposes. For example, to define the written part of the left hand page:
<facsimile>
 <surface
   ulx="50"
   uly="20"
   lrx="210"
   lry="280">

  <desc>Left hand page</desc>
  <zone
    ulx="0"
    uly="0"
    lrx="500"
    lry="321">

   <graphic
     url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Handschrift.karlsruhe.blb.jpg"/>

  </zone>
  <zone
    ulx="90"
    uly="40"
    lrx="200"
    lry="225">

   <desc>Written part of left hand page</desc>
  </zone>
 </surface>
</facsimile>
In the following example, we discuss a hypothetical digital edition of an early 16th century French work, Charles de Bovelles' Géometrie Pratique.36 In this edition, each page has been digitized as a separate file: for example, recto page 49 is stored in a file called Bovelles-49r.png. In the facsimile element used to contain the whole set of pages, we define a surface element for this page, which we situate within a coordinate scale running from 0 to 200 in the x (horizontal) axis, and 0 to 300 in the y (vertical) axis. The surface element contains a graphic element which represents the whole of this surface:
<facsimile>
 <surface
   ulx="0"
   uly="0"
   lrx="200"
   lry="300">

  <graphic url="Bovelles-49r.png"/>
 </surface>
</facsimile>
We can now identify distinct zones within the page image using the coordinate scale defined for the surface. In Abbildung 3, Zones within a surface we show the upper part of the page, with boxes indicating four such zones. Each of these will be represented by a zone element, given within the surface element already defined, and specified in terms of the same coordinate system.
Zones within a surface
Abbildung 3. Zones within a surface
The following encoding defines each of the four zones identified in the figure.
<facsimile>
 <surface
   ulx="0"
   uly="0"
   lrx="200"
   lry="300">

  <graphic url="Bovelles-49r.png"/>
  <zone
    ulx="25"
    uly="25"
    lrx="180"
    lry="60">

   <desc>contains the title</desc>
  </zone>
  <zone
    ulx="28"
    uly="75"
    lrx="175"
    lry="178"/>

<!-- contains the paragraph in italics -->
  <zone
    ulx="105"
    uly="76"
    lrx="175"
    lry="160"/>

<!-- contains the figure -->
  <zone
    ulx="45"
    uly="125"
    lrx="60"
    lry="130"/>

<!-- contains the word "pendans" -->
 </surface>
</facsimile>
Note that the location of each zone is defined independently but using the same coordinate system, so that they may overlap freely. Zones need not nest within each other; they must however be rectangular, as previously noted. As noted earlier, a zone may fall outside the area of the surface which defines its coordinate space.
In this example a single graphic element has been associated directly with the surface of the page rather than nesting it within a zone. However, it is also possible to include multiple zone elements which contain a graphic element, if for example a detailed image is available. Since all zone elements use the same coordinate system (that defined by their parent surface), there is no need to demonstrate enclosure of one zone within another by means of nesting. To continue the current example, supposing that we have an additional image called Bovelles49r-detail.png containing an additional image of the figure in the third zone above, we might encode that zone as follows:
<zone
  ulx="105"
  uly="76"
  lrx="175"
  lry="160">

 <graphic url="Bovelles49r-detail.png"/>
</zone>
Now suppose that we wish to align a transcription of this page with the zones identified above. The first step is to give each relevant part of the facsimile an identifier:
<facsimile>
 <surface
   ulx="0"
   uly="0"
   lrx="200"
   lry="300">

  <zone
    xml:id="B49r"
    ulx="0"
    uly="0"
    lrx="200"
    lry="300">

   <graphic url="Bovelles-49r.png"/>
  </zone>
  <zone
    ulx="105"
    uly="76"
    lrx="175"
    lry="160">

   <graphic url="Bovelles49r-detail.png"/>
  </zone>
  <zone
    xml:id="B49rHead"
    ulx="25"
    uly="25"
    lrx="180"
    lry="60"/>

<!-- contains the title -->
  <zone
    xml:id="B49rPara2"
    ulx="28"
    uly="75"
    lrx="175"
    lry="178"/>

<!-- contains the paragraph in italics -->
  <zone
    xml:id="B49rFig1"
    ulx="105"
    uly="76"
    lrx="175"
    lry="160"/>

<!-- contains the figure -->
  <zone
    xml:id="B49rW457"
    ulx="45"
    uly="125"
    lrx="60"
    lry="130"/>

<!-- contains the word "pendans" -->
 </surface>
</facsimile>
The alignment between transcription and image is made, as usual, by means of the facs attribute:
<pb facs="#B49r"/>
<fw>De Geometrie 49</fw>
<head facs="#B49rHead">DU SON ET ACCORD DES CLOCHES ET <lb/> des alleures des chevaulx,
chariotz &amp; charges, des fontaines:&amp; <lb/> encyclie du monde,
&amp; de la dimension du corps humain.</head>
<head>Chapitre septiesme</head>
<div n="1">
 <p>Le son &amp; accord des cloches pendans en ung mesme <lb/> axe, est
   faict en contraires parties.</p>
 <p rend="it" facs="#B49rPara2">LEs cloches ont quasi fi<lb/>gures de rondes
   pyra<lb/>mides imperfaictes &amp; <lb/> irregulieres: &amp; leur
   accord se <lb/> fait par reigle geometrique. Com<lb/>me si les deux
   cloches C &amp; D <lb/> sont <w facs="#B49rW457">pendans</w> à ung
   mesme axe <lb/> ou essieu A B: je dis que leur ac<lb/>cord se fera en
   co<ex>n</ex>traires parties<lb/> co<ex>m</ex>me voyez icy
   figuré. Car qua<ex>n</ex>d <lb/> lune sera en hault, laultre
   declinera embas. Aultrement si elles decli<lb/>nent toutes deux
   ensembles en une mesme partie, elles seront discord, <lb/> &amp; sera
   leur sonnerie mal plaisante à oyr.<figure facs="#B49rFig1">
   <graphic url="Bovelles49r-detail.png"/>
  </figure>
 </p>
</div>

Further discussion of the encoding choices made in the above transcription is provided in the remainder of this chapter.

It is also possible to point in the other direction, from a surface or zone to the corresponding text. This is the function of the start attribute, which supplies the identifier of the element containing the transcribed text found within the surface or zone concerned. Thus, another way of linking this page with its transcription would be simply
<facsimile>
 <surface start="#PB49R">
  <graphic url="Bovelles-49r.png"/>
 </surface>
</facsimile>
<text>
 <body>
  <div>
<!-- ... -->
   <pb xml:id="PB49R"/>
   <fw>De Geometrie 49</fw>
<!-- ... -->
  </div>
 </body>
</text>

11.2 Scope of Transcriptions

When transcribing a primary source, scholars may wish to record information concerning individual readings of letters, words, or larger units, whether the object is simply a ‘neutral’ transcription or a critical edition. In either case they may also wish to include other editorial material, such as comments on the status or possible origin of particular readings, corrections, or text supplied to fill lacunae. Further, it is customary in transcriptions to register certain features of the source, such as ornamentation, underlining, deletion, areas of damage and lacunae. This chapter provides ways of encoding such information:

These recommendations are not intended to meet every transcriptional circumstance likely to be faced by any scholar. Rather, they should be regarded as a base which can be elaborated if necessary by different scholars in different disciplines.

As a rule, all elements which may be used in the course of a transcription of a single witness may also be used in a critical apparatus, i.e. within the elements proposed in chapter 12 Critical Apparatus. This can generally be achieved by nesting a particular reading containing tagged elements from a particular witness within the rdg element in an app structure.

Just as a critical apparatus may contain transcriptional elements within its record of variant readings in various witnesses, one may record variant readings in an individual witness by use of the apparatus mechanisms app and rdg. This is discussed in section 12.3 Using Apparatus Elements in Transcriptions.

11.3 Altered, Corrected, and Erroneous Texts

In the detailed transcription of any source, it may prove necessary to record various types of actual or potential alteration of the text: expansion of abbreviations, correction of the text (either by author, scribe, or later hand, or by previous or current editors or scholars), addition, deletion, or substitution of material, and the like. The sections below describe how such phenomena may be encoded using either elements defined in the core module (defined in chapter 3 Elements Available in All TEI Documents) or specialized elements available only when the module described in this chapter is available.

11.3.1 Core elements for Transcriptional Work

In transcribing individual sources of any type, encoders may record corrections, normalizations, expansions of abbreviations, additions, and omissions using the elements described in section 3.4 Simple Editorial Changes. Those particularly relevant to this chapter include:
  • abbr (abbreviation) contains an abbreviation of any sort.
  • add (addition) contains letters, words, or phrases inserted in the text by an author, scribe, annotator, or corrector.
  • choice groups a number of alternative encodings for the same point in a text.
  • corr (correction) contains the correct form of a passage apparently erroneous in the copy text.
  • del (deletion) contains a letter, word, or passage deleted, marked as deleted, or otherwise indicated as superfluous or spurious in the copy text by an author, scribe, annotator, or corrector.
  • expan (expansion) contains the expansion of an abbreviation.
  • gap (gap) indicates a point where material has been omitted in a transcription, whether for editorial reasons described in the TEI header, as part of sampling practice, or because the material is illegible, invisible, or inaudible.
  • sic (latin for thus or so ) contains text reproduced although apparently incorrect or inaccurate.
Several of these elements bear additional attributes for specifying who is responsible for the interpretation represented by the markup, and the certainty associated with it. In addition, some of them bear an attribute allowing the markup to be categorised by type and source.
  • att.editLike provides attributes describing the nature of a encoded scholarly intervention or interpretation of any kind.
    evidenceindicates the nature of the evidence supporting the reliability or accuracy of the intervention or interpretation.
    sourcecontains a list of one or more pointers indicating sources supporting the given intervention or interpretation.
  • att.responsibility provides attributes indicating who is responsible for something asserted by the markup and the degree of certainty associated with it.
    cert (certainty) signifies the degree of certainty associated with the intervention or interpretation.
    resp (responsible party) indicates the agency responsible for the intervention or interpretation, for example an editor or transcriber.
  • att.typed provides attributes which can be used to classify or subclassify elements in any way.
    typecharacterizes the element in some sense, using any convenient classification scheme or typology.
    subtypeprovides a sub-categorization of the element, if needed
The specific aspect of the markup described by these attributes differs on different elements; for further discussion, see the relevant sections below, especially section 11.4.2 Hand, Responsibility, and Certainty Attributes.

The following sections describe how the core elements just named may be used in the transcription of primary source materials.

11.3.2 Abbreviation and Expansion

The writing of manuscripts by hand lends itself to the use of abbreviation to shorten scribal labour. Commonly occurring letters, groups of letters, words, or even whole phrases, may be represented by significant marks. This phenomenon of manuscript abbreviation is so widespread and so various that no taxonomy of it is here attempted. Instead, methods are shown which allow abbreviations to be encoded using the core elements mentioned above.

A manuscript abbreviation may be viewed in two ways. One may transcribe it as a particular sequence of letters or marks upon the page: thus, a ‘p with a bar through the descender’, a ‘superscript hook’, a ‘macron’. One may also interpret the abbreviation in terms of the letter or letters it is seen as standing for: thus, ‘per’, ‘re’, ‘n’. Both of these views are supported by these Guidelines.

In many cases the glyph found in the manuscript source also exists in the Unicode character set: for example the common Latin brevigraph ⁊, standing for et and often known as the ‘Tironian et’ can be directly represented in any XML document as the Unicode character with code point U+204A (see further Character References and vi.1. Language identification). In cases where it does not, these Guidelines recommend use of the g element provided by the gaiji module described in chapter 5 Representation of Non-standard Characters and Glyphs. This module allows the encoder great flexibility both in processing and in documenting non-standard characters or glyphs, including the ability to provide detailed documentation and images for them.

These two methods of coding abbreviation may also be combined. An encoder may record, for any abbreviation, both the sequence of letters or marks which constitutes it, and its sense, that is, the letter or letters for which it is believed to stand. For example, in the following fragment the phrase euery persone is represented by a sequence of characters which may be transcribed directly, using the g element to indicate the two brevigraphs it contains as follows:
eu<g ref="#b-er">er</g>y <g ref="#b-per">per</g>sone that loketh after heuen hath a place in this
ladder

<!-- elsewhere -->
<charDecl>
 <char xml:id="b-er">
<!-- definition for the er brevigraph -->
 </char>
 <char xml:id="b-per">
<!-- definition for the per brevigraph -->
 </char>
</charDecl>
Note that in each case the g element may contain a suggested replacement for the referenced brevigraph; this is purely advisory however, and may not be appropriate in all cases. The referenced character definitions may be located elsewhere in this or some other document, typically forming part of a charDecl element, as described in 5.2 Markup Constructs for Representation of Characters and Glyphs.
The transcriber may also wish to indicate that, because of the presence of these particular characters, the two words are actually abbreviations, by using the abbr element:
<abbr>eu<g ref="#b-er">er</g>y</abbr>
<abbr>
 <g ref="#b-per">per</g>sone
</abbr>
...
Alternatively, the transcriber may choose silently to expand these abbreviations, using the expan element:
<expan>euery</expan>
<expan>persone</expan> ...
And, of course, the choice element can be used to show that one encoding is an alternative for the other:
<choice>
 <abbr>eu<g ref="#b-er">er</g>y</abbr>
 <expan>euery</expan>
</choice>
When abbreviated forms such as these are expanded, two processes are carried out: some characters not present in the abbreviation are added (always), and some characters or glyphs present in the abbreviation are omitted or replaced (often). For example, when the abbreviation Dr. is expanded to Doctor, the dot in the abbreviation is removed, and the letters octo are added. Where detailed markup of abbreviated words is required, these two aspects may be marked up explicitly, using the following elements:
  • ex (editorial expansion) contains a sequence of letters added by an editor or transcriber when expanding an abbreviation.
  • am (abbreviation marker) contains a sequence of letters or signs present in an abbreviation which are omitted or replaced in the expanded form of the abbreviation.
Using these elements, a transcriber may indicate the status of the individual letters or signs within both the abbreviation and the expansion. The am element surrounds characters or signs such as tittles or tildes, used to indicate the presence of an abbreviation, which are typically removed or replaced by other characters in the expanded form of the abbreviation:
<abbr>eu<am>
  <g ref="#b-er"/>
 </am>y</abbr>
<abbr>
 <am>
  <g ref="#b-per"/>
 </am>sone
</abbr> ...
while the ex element may be used to indicate those characters within the expansion which are not present in the abbreviated form.
<expan>eu<ex>er</ex>y</expan>
<expan>
 <ex>per</ex>sone
</expan> ...
The content of the abbr element should usually include the whole of the abbreviated word, while the expan element should include the whole of its expansion. If this is not considered necessary, the am and ex elements may be used within a choice element, as in this example:
eu<choice>
 <am>
  <g ref="#b-er"/>
 </am>
 <ex>er</ex>
</choice>y
<choice>
 <am>
  <g ref="#b-per"/>
 </am>
 <ex>per</ex>
</choice>sone ...

As implied in the preceding discussion, making decisions about which of these various methods of representing abbreviation to use will form an important part of an encoder's practice. As a rule, the abbr and am elements should be preferred where it is wished to signify that the content of the element is an abbreviation, without necessarily indicating what the abbreviation may stand for. The ex and expan elements should be used where it is wished to signify that the content of the element is not present in the source but has been supplied by the transcriber, without necessarily indicating the abbreviation used in the original. The decision as to which course of action is appropriate may vary from abbreviation to abbreviation; there is no requirement that the one system be used throughout a transcription, although doing so will generally simplify processing. The choice is likely to be a matter of editorial policy. If the highest priority is to transcribe the text literatim, while indicating the presence of abbreviations, the choice will be to use abbr or am throughout. If the highest priority is to present a reading transcription, while indicating that some letters or words are not actually present in the original, the choice will be to use ex or expan throughout.

Further information may be attached to instances of these elements by the note element, on which see section 3.8 Notes, Annotation, and Indexing, and by use of the resp and cert attributes. In this instance from the English Brut, a note is attached to an editorial expansion of the tail on the final d of good to goode:
For alle the while that I had
good<ex xml:id="exp01">e</ex>
I was welbeloued
Then the note:
<note target="#exp01">The stroke added to the final d could signify the
plural ending (-es, -is, -ys>) but the singular <hi rend="it">good</hi> was used with the meaning <q>property</q>,
<q>wealth</q>, at this time (v. examples quoted in OED, sb. Good,
C. 7, b, c, d and 8 spec.)</note>
The editor might declare a degree of certainty for this expansion, based on the OED examples, and state the responsibility for the expansion:
For alle the while that I had
good<ex resp="#mp" cert="high">e</ex> I was welbeloued
The value supplied for the resp attribute should point to the name of the editor responsible for this and possibly other interventions; an appropriate element therefore might be a respStmt element in the header like the following:
<respStmt xml:id="mp">
 <resp>Editorial emendations</resp>
 <name>Malcom Parkes</name>
</respStmt>
Observe that the cert and resp attributes are used with the ex element only to indicate confidence in the content of the element (i.e. the expansion), and responsibility for suggesting this expansion respectively.
The choice element may be used to indicate that the proposed expansion is one way of encoding what might equally well be represented as an abbreviation, represented by the hooked D, as follows:
For alle the while that I had
<choice>
 <sic>good<abbr>ɽ</abbr>
 </sic>
 <expan resp="#mp" cert="high">good<ex>e</ex>
 </expan>
</choice>
I was welbeloued
If it is desired to express aspects of certainty and responsibility for some other aspect of the use of these elements, then the mechanisms discussed in chapter 21 Certainty, Precision, and Responsibility should be used. See also 11.4.2 Hand, Responsibility, and Certainty Attributes for discussion of the issues of certainty and responsibility in the context of transcription.

If more than one expansion for the same abbreviation is to be recorded, multiple notes may be supplied. It may also be appropriate to use the markup for critical apparatus; an example is given in section 12.3 Using Apparatus Elements in Transcriptions.

11.3.3 Correction and Conjecture

The sic, corr, and choice elements, defined in the core module should be used to indicate passages deemed in need of correction, or actually corrected, during the transcription of a source. For example, in the manuscript of William James's A Pluralistic Universe, edited by Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977) a sentence first written

One must have lived longer with this system, to appreciate its advantages.

has been modified by James to begin ‘But One must ...’, without the inital capital O having been reduced to lowercase. This non-standard orthography could be recorded thus:
But <sic>One</sic>
must have lived ...
or corrected:
But <corr>one</corr> must
have lived ...
or the two possibilities might be represented as a choice:
But
<choice>
 <sic>One</sic>
 <corr>one</corr>
</choice> must have lived
...
Similarly, in this example from Albertus Magnus, both a manuscript error angues and its correction augens are registered within a choice element:
Nos autem iam ostendimus quod nutrimentum
et <choice>
 <sic>angues</sic>
 <corr>augens</corr>
</choice>.

Note that the corr element is used to provide a corrected form which is not present in the source; in the case of a correction made in the source itself, whether scribal, authorial, or by some other hand, the add, del, and subst elements described in 11.3.4 Additions and Deletions should be used.

The sic element is used to mark passages considered by the transcriber to be erroneous; in such cases, the corr element indicates the transcriber's correction of them. Where the transcriber considers that one or more words have been erroneously omitted in the original source and corrects this omission, the supplied element discussed in 11.3.7 Text Omitted from or Supplied in the Transcription should be used in preference to corr. Thus, in the following example, from George Moore's draft of additional materials for Memoirs of My Dead Life, the transcriber supplies the word we omitted by the author:
You see that I avoid the word create for we
create nothing <supplied>we</supplied> develope.

As with expan and abbr, the choice as to whether to record simply that there is an apparent error, or simply that a correction has been applied, or to record both possible readings within a choice element is left to the encoder. The decision is likely to be a matter of editorial policy, which might be applied consistently throughout or decided case by case. If the highest priority is to present an uncorrected transcription while noting perceived errors in the original, the choice will typically be to use only sic throughout. If the highest priority is to present a reading transcription, while indicating that perceived errors in the original have been corrected, the choice will be to use only corr throughout.

Further information may be attached to instances of these elements by the note element and resp and cert attributes. Instances of these elements may also be classified according to any convenient typology using the type attribute.

For example, consider the following encoding of an emendation in the Hengwrt manuscript proposed by E. Talbot Donaldson:
Telle me also, to what conclusioun
Were membres maad, of generacioun
And of so parfit wis a
<choice xml:id="corr117">
 <sic>wight</sic>
 <corr>wright</corr>
</choice>
ywroght?

<!-- ... -->
<note target="#corr117">This emendation of the Hengwrt copy text,
based on a Latin source and on the reading of three late
and usually unauthoritative manuscripts, was proposed
by E. Talbot Donaldson in <bibl>
  <title>Speculum</title> 40 (1965)
   626–33.</bibl>
</note>
The note element discussed in 3.8 Notes, Annotation, and Indexing may be used to give a more detailed discussion of the motivation for or scope of a correction. If linked by means of a pointer (as in this example) it may be located anywhere convenient within the transcription; typically all detailed notes will be collected together in a separate div element in the back. Alternatively, the pointer may be omitted, and the note placed immediately adjacent to the element being annotated. The advantage of the former solution is that it permits the same annotation to refer to several corrections.
The attribute cert may be used to indicate the degree of confidence ascribed by the encoder to the proposed emendation on a broad scale: high, medium, or low. The attribute resp is used to indicate who is responsible for the proposed emendation. Its value is a pointer, which will typically indicate a respStmt or name element in the header of the transcribed document, but can point anywhere, for example to some online authority file. Using these two attributes, the corr element presented above might usefully be enhanced as follows:

<!-- somewhere in the header ... --><name xml:id="ETD">E Talbot Donaldson</name>
<!-- ... -->
And of so parfit wis a
<choice>
 <sic>wight</sic>
 <corr resp="#ETD" cert="medium">wright</corr>
</choice>
ywroght?
As remarked above, where the same annotation applies to several corrections, this may be represented by supplying multiple pointers on the note. Consider for example such corrections as the following, in Dudo of S. Quentin. Parkes cites two cases in this manuscript of the same phenomenon:
quamuis <choice xml:id="sic-1">
 <sic>mens</sic>
 <corr>iners</corr>
</choice> que nutu dei
gesta sunt ... unde esset uiriliter
<choice xml:id="sic-2">
 <corr>uegetata</corr>
 <sic>negata</sic>
</choice>
which may be described as follows:
<note target="#sic-1 #sic-2">Substitution of a more familiar word which resembles
graphically what the scribe should be copying but which does not make
sense in the context.</note>
The target attribute on the note element indicates the choice elements which exemplify this kind of scribal error. This necessitates the addition of an identifier to each choice element. However, if the number of corrections is large and the number of notes is small, it may well be both more practical and more appropriate to regard the collection of annotations as constituting a typology and then use the type attribute. Suppose that the note given above is one of half a dozen possible kinds of corrected phenomena identified in a given text; others might include, say, ‘repetition of a word from the preceding line’, etc. The type attribute on the corr element can be used to specify an arbitrary code for the particular kind of correction (or other editorial intervention) identified within it. This code can be chosen freely and is not treated as a pointer.
quamuis
<choice>
 <sic>mens</sic>
 <corr type="graphSubs">iners</corr>
</choice> que nutu dei
gesta sunt ... unde esset uiriliter
<choice>
 <corr type="graphSubs">uegetata</corr>
 <sic>negata</sic>
</choice>
Note that this encoding might be extended to include a range of possible corrections:
quamuis
<choice>
 <sic>mens</sic>
 <corr type="graphSubs">iners</corr>
 <corr type="reversal">inres</corr>
</choice> que nutu dei
gesta sunt ...
In addition, the conscientious encoder will provide documentation explaining the circumstances in which particular codes are judged appropriate. A suitable location for this might be within the correction element of the encodingDesc of the header, which might include a list such as the following:
<correction>
 <p>The following codes are used to categorise corrections identified
   in this transcription:
 <list type="gloss">
   <label>graphSubs</label>
   <item>Substitution of a more familiar word which resembles
       graphically what the scribe should be copying but which does not make
       sense in the context.</item>
<!-- ... -->
  </list>
 </p>
</correction>
A subtype attribute may be used in conjunction with the type for subclassification purposes: the above examples might thus be represented as <choice type="substitution" subtype="graphicResemblence"> for example.

For a given project, it may well be desirable to limit the possible values for the type or subtype attributes automatically. This is easily done but requires customization of the TEI system using techniques described in 23.2 Personalization and Customization, in particular 23.2.1.4 Modification of Attribute and Attribute Value Lists, which should be consulted for further information on this topic.

When making a correction in a source which forms part of a textual tradition attested by many witnesses, a textual editor will sometimes use a reading from one witness to correct the reading of the source text. In the general case, such encoding is best achieved with the mechanisms provided by the module for textual criticism described in chapter 12 Critical Apparatus. However, for simple cases, the source attribute of the corr attribute may suffice. In the passage from Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale mentioned above, Parkes proposes to emend the problematic word wight to wyf which is the reading found in the Cambridge manuscript Gg.1. 27. This may be simply represented as follows:
And of so parfit wis a
<choice>
 <sic>wight</sic>
 <corr resp="#mp" source="#Gg">wyf</corr>
</choice>
ywroght?
The value of the source attribute here is, like the value of the resp attribute, a pointer, in this case indicating the manuscript used as a witness. Elsewhere in the transcribed text, a list of witnesses used in this text will be given, one of which has an identifier Gg. Each witness will be represented either by a witness element (see 12.1 The Apparatus Entry, Readings, and Witnesses) or more fully by a msDesc element (see 10 Manuscript Description) :
<msDesc xml:id="Gg">
 <msIdentifier>
  <settlement>Cambridge</settlement>
  <repository>University Library</repository>
  <idno>Gg.1. 27</idno>
 </msIdentifier>
<!-- further description of the manuscript here -->
</msDesc>
The app element described in chapter 12 Critical Apparatus provides a more powerful way of representing all three possible readings in parallel:
And of so
parfit wis a
<app>
 <rdg wit="#Hg">wight</rdg>
 <rdg wit="#Ln #Ry2 #Ld">wright</rdg>
 <rdg wit="#Gg">wyf</rdg>
</app>
This encoding simply records the three readings found in the various traditions, and gives (by means of the wit attribute) an indication of the witnesses supporting each. If the resp attribute were supplied on the rdg element, it would indicate the person responsible for asserting that the manuscript indicated has this reading, who is not necessarily the same as the person responsible for asserting that this reading should be used to correct the others. Editorial intervention elements such as corr can however be nested within a rdg to provide this additional information:
And of so
parfit wis a
<app>
 <rdg wit="#Hg">wight</rdg>
 <rdg wit="#Ln #Ry2 #Ld">
  <corr resp="#ETD">wright</corr>
 </rdg>
 <rdg wit="#Gg">
  <corr resp="#mp">wyf</corr>
 </rdg>
</app>
This encoding asserts that the reading wyf found in Gg is regarded as a correction by Parkes.

Like the resp attribute, the cert attribute may be used with both corr and rdg elements. When used on the rdg element, these attributes indicate confidence in and responsibility for identifying the reading within the sources specified; when used on the corr element they indicate confidence in and responsibility for the use of the reading to correct the base text. If no other source is indicated (either by the source attribute, or by the wit attribute of a parent rdg), the reading supplied within a corr has been provided by the person indicated by the resp attribute.

If it is desired to express aspects of certainty and responsibility for some other aspect of the use of these elements, then the mechanisms discussed in chapter 21 Certainty, Precision, and Responsibility may be found useful. See also 11.4.2 Hand, Responsibility, and Certainty Attributes for further discussion of the issues of certainty and responsibility in the context of transcription.

11.3.4 Additions and Deletions

Additions and deletions observed in a source text may be described using the following elements:
  • add (addition) contains letters, words, or phrases inserted in the text by an author, scribe, annotator, or corrector.
  • addSpan/ (added span of text) marks the beginning of a longer sequence of text added by an author, scribe, annotator or corrector (see also add).
  • del (deletion) contains a letter, word, or passage deleted, marked as deleted, or otherwise indicated as superfluous or spurious in the copy text by an author, scribe, annotator, or corrector.
  • delSpan/ (deleted span of text) marks the beginning of a longer sequence of text deleted, marked as deleted, or otherwise signaled as superfluous or spurious by an author, scribe, annotator, or corrector.
Of these, add and del are included in the core module, while addSpan and delSpan are available only when using the module defined in this chapter. These particular elements are members of the att.spanning class, from which they inherit the following attribute:
  • att.spanning provides attributes for elements which delimit a span of text by pointing mechanisms rather than by enclosing it.
    spanToindicates the end of a span initiated by the element bearing this attribute.
Further characteristics of each addition and deletion, such as the hand used, its effect (complete or incomplete, for example), or its position in a sequence of such operations may conveniently be recorded as attributes of these elements, all of which are members of the att.transcriptional class:
  • att.transcriptional provides attributes specific to elements encoding authorial or scribal intervention in a text when transcribing manuscript or similar sources.
    seq (sequence) assigns a sequence number related to the order in which the encoded features carrying this attribute are believed to have occurred.
    statusindicates the effect of the intervention, for example in the case of a deletion, strikeouts which include too much or too little text, or in the case of an addition, an insertion which duplicates some of the text already present.
    handsignifies the hand of the agent which made the intervention.
As described in section 3.4 Simple Editorial Changes, the add element is used to record any manuscript addition observed in the text, whether it is considered to be authorial or scribal. In the autograph manuscript of Max Beerbohm's The Golden Drugget, the author's addition of do ever may be recorded as follows, with the hand attribute indicating that the addition was Beerbohm's by referencing a handNote element defined elsewhere in the document (see further 11.4.1 Document Hands):
Some things are best at first
sight. Others — and here is one of them — <add hand="#mb">do
ever</add> improve by recognition ....

<handNote xml:id="mb">Max Beerbohm holograph</handNote>
Similarly, when the del element is used to record manuscript deletions. In the autograph manuscript of D. H. Lawrence's Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani the author's deletion of my may be recorded as follows. In this case, the hand attribute indicating that the deletion was Lawrence's is complemented by a rend attribute indicating that the deletion was by strike-through:
For I hate this <del rend="strikethrough" hand="#dhl">my</del> body, which is so dear to me
...

<handNote xml:id="dhl">D H Lawrence holograph</handNote>

If deletions are classified systematically, the type attribute may be useful to indicate the classification; when they are classified by the manner in which they were effected, or by their appearance, however, this will lead to a certain arbitrariness in deciding whether to use the type or the rend attribute to hold the information. In general, it is recommended that the rend attribute be used for description of the appearance or method of deletion, and that the type attribute be reserved for higher level or more abstract classifications.

The place attribute is also available to indicate the location of an addition. For example, consider the following passage from a draft letter by Robert Graves:
At the end of this extract, the writer inserts the word ‘cant,’ above the line, with a stroke to indicate insertion. Assuming that we have previously defined the identifier RG somewhere:
<listPerson>
 <person xml:id="RG">
<!-- information about Robert Graves here -->
 </person>
</listPerson>
, this extract might now be encoded as follows:
The O.E.D. is not a dictionary so much as a corpus of
precedents <del hand="#RG">in the</del>: current,
obsolete, <add hand="#RG" place="above">cant,</add>
cataphretic and nonce-words are all included.
A little earlier in the same extract, Graves writes ‘for an abridgement’ above the line, and then deletes it. This may be encoded similarly:
As for 'significant artist.' You quote the O.E.D <add hand="#RG" place="above">
 <del>for an abridgement</del>
</add>in
explanation...
Similarly, in the margin, the word ‘Norton’ has been added and then deleted:
You quote the <add hand="#RG" place="margin">
 <del>Norton</del>
</add>
O.E.D...
The word ‘O.E.D.’ in this first sentence has also clearly been the result of some redrafting: it may be that Graves started to write ‘Oxford’, and then changed it; it may be that he inserted other punctuation marks between the letters before replacing them with the centre dots used elsewhere to represent this acronym. We do not deal with these possibilities here, and mention them only to indicate that any encoding of manuscript material of this complexity will need to make decisions about what is and is not worth mentioning.
An encoder may also wish to indicate that an addition replaces a specific deletion, that is to encode a substitution as a single intervention in the text. This may be achieved by grouping the addition and deletion together within a subst element. At the end of the passage illustrated above, Graves first writes ‘It is the expressed...’, then deletes ‘It is’, and substitutes an uppercase T at the start of ‘the’.
...
are all included. <del hand="#RG">It is</del>
<subst>
 <add>T</add>
 <del>t</del>
</subst>he expressed
The use of this element and of the seq attribute to indicate the order in which interventions such as deletions are believed to have occurred are further discussed in section 11.3.5 Substitutions below.

The add and del elements defined in the core module suffice only for the description of additions and deletions which fit within the structure of the text being transcribed, that is, which each deletion or addition is completely contained by the structural element (paragraph, line, division) within which it occurs. Where this is not the case, for example because an individual addition or deletion involves several distinct structural subdivisions, such as poems or prose items, or otherwise crosses a structural boundary in the text being encoded, special treatment is needed. The addSpan and delSpan elements are provided by this module for that purpose. (For a general discussion of the issue see further 20 Non-hierarchical Structures).

In this example of the use of addSpan, the insertion by Helgi Ólafsson of a gathering containing four neo-Eddic poems into Lbs 1562 4to is recorded as follows. A handNote element is first declared, within the header of the document, to associate the identifier heol with Helgi. Each of the added poems is encoded as a distinct div element. In the body of the text, an addSpan element is placed to mark the beginning of the span of added text, and an anchor is used to mark its end. The hand attribute on the addSpan element ascribes responsibility for the addition to the manuscript to Helgi, and the spanTo attribute points to the end of the added text:
<handNote xml:id="heol" scribe="HelgiÓlafsson"/>
<!-- ... -->
<body>
 <div>
<!-- text here -->
 </div>
 <addSpan n="added gathering" hand="#heol" spanTo="#p025"/>
 <div>
<!-- text of first added poem here -->
 </div>
 <div>
<!-- text of second added poem here -->
 </div>
 <div>
<!-- text of third added poem here -->
 </div>
 <div>
<!-- text of fourth added poem here -->
 </div>
 <anchor xml:id="p025"/>
 <div>
<!-- more text here -->
 </div>
</body>
The delSpan element is used in the same way. An authorial manuscript will often contain several occasions where sequences of whole lines are marked for deletion, either by boxes or by being struck out. If the encoder is marking up individual verse lines with the l element, such deletions are problematic: deletion of two consecutive lines should be regarded as a single deletion, but the del element must be properly nested within a single l element. The delSpan element solves this problem:
<l>Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,</l>
<delSpan spanTo="#EPdelEnd" resp="#EP" rend="strikethrough"/>
<l>To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the time,</l>
<l>With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.</l>
<anchor xml:id="EPdelEnd"/>
<l>There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson!</l>...
It is also often the case that deletions and additions may themselves contain other deletions and additions. For example, in Thomas Moore's autograph of the second version of Lalla Rookh two lines are marked for omission by vertical strike-through. Within the first of the two lines, the word upon has also been struck out, and the word over has been added:
<l>
 <delSpan rend="verticalStrike" spanTo="#delend01"/>
Tis moonlight <del>upon</del>
 <add>over</add> Oman's sky
</l>
<l>Her isles of pearl look lovelily<anchor xml:id="delend01"/>
</l>
In this case the anchor and delSpan have been placed within the structural elements (the ls) rather than between, as in the previous example. This is to indicate that placement of these empty elements is arbitrary.

The text deleted must be at least partially legible, in order for the encoder to be able to transcribe it. If all of part of it is not legible, the gap element should be used to indicate where text has not not transcribed, because it could not be. The unclear element described in section 11.5.1 Damage, Illegibility, and Supplied Text may be used to indicate areas of text which cannot be read with confidence. See further section 11.3.7 Text Omitted from or Supplied in the Transcription and section 11.5.1 Damage, Illegibility, and Supplied Text.

11.3.5 Substitutions

Substitution of one word or phrase for another is perhaps the most common of all phenomena requiring special treatment in transcription of primary textual sources. It may be simply one word overwriting another, or deletion of one word and its replacement by another written above it by the same hand at the one time; the deletion and replacement may be done by different hands at different times; there may be a long chain of substitutions on the one stretch of text, with uncertainty as to the order of substitution and as to which of many possible readings should be preferred.

As we have shown, the simplest method of recording a substitution is simply to record both the addition and the deletion. However, when the module defined by this chapter is in use, an additional element is available to indicate that the encoder believes the addition and the deletion to be part of the same intervention: a substitution.
  • subst (substitution) groups one or more deletions with one or more additions when the combination is to be regarded as a single intervention in the text.
Using this element, the example at the end of the last section might be encoded as follows:
<l>
 <delSpan rend="verticalStrike" spanTo="#delend02"/>
Tis moonlight <subst>
  <del>upon</del>
  <add>over</add>
 </subst> Oman's sky
</l>
<l>Her isles of pearl look lovelily<anchor xml:id="delend02"/>
</l>
Since the purpose of this element is solely to group its child elements together, the order in which they are presented is not significant. By convention, however, deletion precedes addition. This may be overridden by means of the seq attribute, which is of particular usefulness when a sequence of deletions and additions occurs.
For example, returning to the example from William James, in a passage first written out by James as ‘One must have lived longer with this system, to appreciate its advantages’, the word this is first replaced by such a and this is then replaced by a.37 This may be encoded as follows, representing the two changes as a sequence of additions and deletions:
One must have lived longer
with <subst>
 <del seq="1">this</del>
 <del seq="2">
  <add seq="1">such
     a</add>
 </del>
 <add seq="2">a</add>
</subst> system, to appreciate its
advantages.
Note the nesting of an add element within a del to record text first added, then deleted in the source. The numbers assigned by the seq attribute may be used to identify the order in which the various additions and deletions are believed by the encoder to have been carried out, and thus provide a simple method of supporting the kind of ‘genetic’ textual criticism typified by (for example) Hans Walter Gabler's work on the reconstruction of the ‘overlay’ levels implicit in the manuscripts of James Joyce's Ulysses.
As a more complex example, consider the following passage in one of the manuscripts of Wilfred Owen's Dulce et decorum est:
This passage might be encoded as follows:
<l>And towards our distant rest began to trudge,</l>
<l>
 <subst>
  <del>Helping the worst amongst us</del>
  <add>Dragging the
     worst amongt us</add>
 </subst>, who'd no boots
</l>
<l>But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame;
<subst>
  <del status="shortEnd">half-</del>
  <add>all</add>
 </subst> blind;</l>
<l>Drunk with fatigue ; deaf even to the hoots</l>
<l>Of tired, outstripped <del>fif</del> five-nines that dropped behind.</l>
In this representation,
  • the false start fif in the last line is simply marked as a deletion;
  • the other two authorial corrections are marked as substitutions, each combining a deletion and an addition.
  • the authorial slip (amongt for amongst) is retained without comment.
The app element presented in chapter 12 Critical Apparatus provides similar facilities, by treating each state of the text as a distinct reading. The rdg element has a varSeq attribute which may be used in the same way as the seq attribute to indicate the preferred sequence. The James example above might thus be represented as follows:
One must have lived longer with
<app>
 <rdg varSeq="1">
  <del>this</del>
 </rdg>
 <rdg varSeq="2">
  <del>
   <add>such a</add>
  </del>
 </rdg>
 <rdg varSeq="3">
  <add>a</add>
 </rdg>
</app>
system, to appreciate its advantages.

11.3.6 Cancellation of Deletions and Other Markings

An author or scribe may mark a word or phrase in some way, and then on reflection decide to cancel the marking. For example, text may be marked for deletion and the deletion then cancelled, thus restoring the deleted text. Such cancellation may be indicated by the restore element:
  • restore indicates restoration of text to an earlier state by cancellation of an editorial or authorial marking or instruction.

This element bears the same attributes as the other transcriptional elements. These may be used to supply further information such as the hand in which the restoration is carried out, the type of restoration, and the person responsible for identifying the restoration as such, in the same way as elsewhere.

Presume that Lawrence decided to restore my to the phrase of Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani first written ‘For I hate this my body’, with the my first deleted then restored by writing ‘stet’ in the margin. This may be encoded:
For I hate this
<restore hand="#dhl" type="marginalStetNote">
 <del>my</del>
</restore>
body

Another feature commonly encountered in manuscripts is the use of circles, lines, or arrows to indicate transposition of material from one point in the text to another. No specific markup for this phenomenon is proposed at this time. Such cases are most simply encoded as additions at the point of insertion and deletions at the point of encirclement or other marking.

11.3.7 Text Omitted from or Supplied in the Transcription

Where text is not transcribed, whether because of damage to the original, or because it is illegible, or for some other reason such as editorial policy, the gap core element may be used to register the omission; where such text is transcribed, but the editor wishes to indicate that they consider it to be superfluous, for example because it is an inadvertant scribal repetition, the surplus element may be used in preference. Where text not present in the source is supplied (whether conjecturally or from other witnesses) to fill an apparent gap in the text, the supplied element may be used.
  • gap (gap) indicates a point where material has been omitted in a transcription, whether for editorial reasons described in the TEI header, as part of sampling practice, or because the material is illegible, invisible, or inaudible.
    reasongives the reason for omission. Sample values include sampling, inaudible, irrelevant, cancelled.
    handin the case of text omitted from the transcription because of deliberate deletion by an identifiable hand, signifies the hand which made the deletion.
    agentIn the case of text omitted because of damage, categorizes the cause of the damage, if it can be identified.
  • surplus (Texte superflu) marks text present in the source which the editor believes to be superfluous or redundant.
    reasonindicates the grounds for believing this text to be superfluous.
  • supplied signifies text supplied by the transcriber or editor for any reason, typically because the original cannot be read because of physical damage or loss to the original.
    reasonindicates why the text has had to be supplied.
By its nature, the gap element has no content. It marks a point in the text where nothing at all can be read, whether because of authorial or scribal erasure, physical damage, or any other form of illegibility. Its attributes allow the encoder to specify the amount of text which is illegible in this way at this point, using any convenient units, where this can be determined. For example, in the Beerbohm manuscript of The Golden Drugget cited above, the author has erased a passage amounting about 10 cm in length by inking over it completely:
Others <gap
  reason="cancelled"
  hand="#mb"
  quantity="10"
  unit="cm"/>
—and
here is one of them...
In an autograph letter of Sydney Smith now in the Pierpont Morgan library three words in the signature are quite illegible:
I am dr Sr yr <gap reason="illegible" quantity="3" unit="word"/>Sydney Smith
The degree of precision attempted when measuring the size of a gap will vary with the purpose of the encoding and the nature of the material: no particular recommendation is made here.

As noted above, the gap element should only be used where text has not been transcribed. If partially legible text has been transcribed, one of the elements damage and unclear should be used instead (these elements are described in section 11.5.1 Damage, Illegibility, and Supplied Text); if the text is legible and has been transcribed, but the editor wishes to indicate that they regard it is superfluous or redundant, then the element surplus may be used in preference to the core element sic used to indicate text regarded as erroneous.

For example, when encountering the form ‘dedikararunt’ on an inscription, the editor may choose any of the following three possibilities:
  • mark this as an erroneous form
    <sic>dedikararunt</sic>
  • additionally supply a corrected form
    <choice>
     <sic>dedikararunt</sic>
     <corr>dedikarunt</corr>
    </choice>
  • indicate that the erroneous form contains surplus characters which the editor wishes to suppress
    dedika<surplus>ra</surplus>runt
The surplus element may also be used to mark up interpolations, as in the following example:
<l n="4">a darmi morte, poi m'avete preso
<surplus reason="interpolated">a tradimento</surplus>
</l>
<l n="5">sì com' l'uccellator prende l'uccello</l>
<gap/>
<l n="43">e lettere dintorno che diriano
<surplus reason="interpolated">in questa guisa</surplus>
</l>
<l n="44">Più v'amo, dëa, che non faccio Deo</l>
The words marked as surplus here are metrically inconsistent with the rest and have been marked by the editor as such.
If the source text is completely illegible or missing, an encoder may sometimes wish to supply new (conjectural) material to replace it. This conjectural reading is analogous to a correction in that it contains text provided by the encoder and not attested in the source. This is not however a correction, since no error is necessarily present in the original; for that reason a different element supplied should be used. If another (imaginary) copy of the letter above preserved the signature as reading ‘I am dear Sir your very humble Servt Sydney Smith’, the text illegible in the autograph might be supplied in the transcription:
I
am dr Sr yr <supplied reason="illegible" resp="#msm" source="#Ry2">very humble Servt</supplied> Sydney Smith
Here the source and resp attributes are used, as elsewhere, to indicate respectively the sigil of a manuscript from which the supplied reading has been taken, and the identifier of the person responsible for deciding to supply the text. If the source attribute is not supplied, the implication is that the encoder (or whoever is indicated by the value of the resp attribute) has supplied the missing reading. Both gap and supplied may be used in combination with unclear, damage, and other elements; for discussion, see section 11.5.2 Use of the gap, del, damage, unclear, and supplied Elements in Combination.

11.4 Hands and Responsibility

This section discusses in more detail the representation of aspects of responsibility perceived or to be recorded for the writing of a primary source. These include points at which one scribe takes over from another, or at which ink, pen, or other characteristics of the writing change. A discussion of the usage of the hand, resp, and cert attributes is also included.

11.4.1 Document Hands

For many text-critical purposes it is important to signal the person responsible (the hand) for the writing of a whole document, a stretch of text within a document, or a particular feature within the document. A hand, as the name suggests, need not necessarily be identified with a particular known (or unknown) scribe or author; it may simply indicate a particular combination of writing features recognized within one or more documents. The examples given above of the use of the hand attribute with coding of additions and deletions illustrate this.

The handNote element is used to provide information about each hand distinguished within the encoded document.
  • handNote (note on hand) describes a particular style or hand distinguished within a manuscript.

A handNote element, with an identifier given by its xml:id attribute, may appear in either of two places in the TEI Header, depending on which modules are included in a schema. When the transcr module defined by the present chapter is used, the element handNotes is available, within the profileDesc element of the Header, to hold one or more handNote elements. When the msdescription module defined in chapter 10 Manuscript Description is included, the handDesc element described in 10.7.2 Writing, Decoration, and Other Notations also becomes available as part of a structured manuscript description. The encoder may choose to place handNote elements identifying individual hands in either location without affecting their accessibility since the element is always addressed by means of its xml:id attribute. The handDesc element may be more appropriate when a full cataloguing of each manuscript is required; the handNotes element if only a brief characterization of each hand is needed. It is also possible to use the two elements together if, for example, the handDesc element contains a single summary describing all the hands discursively, while the handNotes element gives specific details of each. The choice will depend on individual encoders' priorities.

As shown above, the hand attribute is available on several elements to indicate the hand in which the content of the element (usually a deletion or addition) is carried out. The handShift element may also be used within the body of a transcription to indicate where a change of hand is detected for whatever reason.
  • handShift/ marks the beginning of a sequence of text written in a new hand, or the beginning of a scribal stint.
Both handShift and handNote are members of the att.handFeatures class, and thus share the following attributes:
  • att.handFeatures provides attributes describing aspects of the hand in which a manuscript is written.
    scribegives a name or other identifier for the scribe believed to be responsible for this hand.
    scriptcharacterizes the particular script or writing style used by this hand, for example secretary, copperplate, Chancery, Italian, etc.
    scribeRefpoints to a full description of the scribe concerned, typically supplied by a person element elsewhere in the description.
    scriptRefpoints to a full description of the script or writing style used by this hand, typically supplied by a scriptNote element elsewhere in the description.
    mediumdescribes the tint or type of ink, e.g. brown, or other writing medium, e.g. pencil
    scopespecifies how widely this hand is used in the manuscript.

A single hand may employ different writing styles and inks within a document, or may change character. For example, the writing style might shift from ‘anglicana’ to ‘secretary’, or the ink from blue to brown, or the character of the hand may change. Simple changes of this kind may be indicated by assigning a new value to the appropriate attribute within the handShift element. It is for the encoder to decide whether a change in these properties of the writing style is so marked as to require treatment as a distinct hand.

Where such a change is to be identified, the new attribute is used to indicate the hand applicable to the material following the handShift. This will ordinarily, but not necessarily, be the order in which the material was originally written.

As might be expected, one hand may employ different renditions within the one writing style, for example medieval scribes often indicate a structural division by emboldening all the words within a line. These should be indicated by use of the rend attribute on an element, in the same manner as underlining, emboldening, font shifts, etc. are represented in transcription of a printed text, rather than by introducing a new handShift element.

In the following example there is a change of ink within the one hand. This is simply indicated by a new value for the medium attribute on the handShift element:
<l>When wolde the cat dwelle in his ynne</l>
<handShift medium="greenish-ink"/>
<l>And if the cattes skynne be slyk <handShift medium="black-ink"/> and gaye</l>
In the following example, the encoder has identified two distinct hands within the document and given them identifiers h1 and h2, by means of the following declarations included in the document's TEI Header:
<handNotes>
 <handNote xml:id="h1" script="copperplate" medium="brown-ink">Carefully written with regular descenders</handNote>
 <handNote xml:id="h2" script="print" medium="pencil">Unschooled scrawl</handNote>
</handNotes>
Then the change of hand is indicated in the text:
<handShift new="#h1" resp="#das"/>... and that good Order Decency and regular worship
may be once more introduced and Established in this
Parish according to the Rules and Ceremonies of the
Church of England and as under a good Consciencious
and sober Curate there would and ought to be
<handShift new="#h2" resp="#das"/>
and for that purpose the parishioners pray

When a more precise or nuanced discussion of the writing in a manuscript is required, the handNote and scriptNote elements discussed in 10.7.2 Writing, Decoration, and Other Notations should be used. Either element may serve as the target for a handShift.

11.4.2 Hand, Responsibility, and Certainty Attributes

The hand and resp attributes have similar, but not identical, meanings. Observe their distinctive uses in the following encoding of the William James passage mentioned above in section 11.3.3 Correction and Conjecture. In this example, the But inserted by James is tagged as an add, and the consequent editorial correction of One to one treated separately:
<add place="above" resp="#FB" hand="#WJ">But</add>
<choice>
 <sic>One</sic>
 <corr resp="#FB">one</corr>
</choice> must have
lived ...

<!-- elsewhere -->
<respStmt xml:id="FB">
 <resp>editorial changes</resp>
 <name>Fredson Bowers</name>
</respStmt>
<respStmt xml:id="WJ">
 <resp>authorial changes</resp>
 <name>William James</name>
</respStmt>
As in this example, hand should be reserved for indicating the hand of any form of marking—here, addition but also deletion, correction, annotation, underlining, etc.—within the primary text being transcribed. The scribal or authorial responsibility for this marking may be inferred from the value of the hand attribute. The value of the hand attribute should be one of the hand identifiers declared in the document header (see section 11.4.1 Document Hands).

The resp attribute, by contrast, indicate the person responsible for deciding to apply the element carrying it to this part of the text, and hence has a slightly different interpretation. In the case of the add element, for example, the resp attribute will indicate the responsibility for identifying that the addition is indeed an addition, and also (if the hand attribute is supplied) to which hand it should be attributed. In this case, Bowers is credited with identifying the hand as that of William James. In the case of the corr element, the resp attribute indicates who is responsible for supplying the intellectual content of the correction reported in the transcription: here, Bowers' correction of ‘One’ to ‘one’. In the case of a deletion, the resp attribute will similarly indicate who bears responsibility for identifying or categorising the deletion itself, while other attributes (hand most obviously) attribute responsibility for the deletion itself.

In cases where both the resp and cert attributes are defined for a particular element, the two attributes refer to the same aspect of the markup. The one indicates who is intellectually responsible for some item of information, the other indicates the degree of confidence in the information. Thus, for a correction, the resp attribute signifies the person responsible for supplying the correction, while the cert attribute signifies the degree of editorial confidence felt in that correction. For the expansion of an abbreviation, the resp attribute signifies the person responsible for supplying the expansion and the cert attribute signifies the degree of editorial confidence felt in the expansion.

This close definition of the use of the resp and cert attributes with each element is intended to provide for the most frequent circumstances in which encoders might wish to make unambiguous statements regarding the responsibility for and certainty of aspects of their encoding. The resp and cert attributes, as so defined, give a convenient mechanism for this. However, there will be cases where it is desired to state responsibility for and certainty concerning other aspects of the encoding. For example, one may wish in the case of an apparent addition to state the responsibility for the use of the add element, rather than the responsibility for identifying the hand of the addition. It may also be that one editor may make an electronic transcription of another editor's printed transcription of a manuscript text — here, one will wish to assign layers of responsibility, so as to allow the reader to determine exactly what in the final transcription was the responsibility of each editor. In these complex cases of divided editorial responsibility for and certainty concerning the content, attributes, and application of a particular element, the more general mechanisms for representing certainty and responsibility described in chapter 21 Certainty, Precision, and Responsibility should be used.

It should be noted that the certainty and responsibility mechanisms described in chapter 21 Certainty, Precision, and Responsibility replicate all the functions of the resp and cert attributes on particular elements. For example, the encoding of Donaldson's conjectured emendation of wight to wright in line 117 of Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue (see 11.3.3 Correction and Conjecture) may be encoded as follows using the resp and cert attributes on the corr element:
<choice>
 <sic>wight</sic>
 <corr resp="#ETD" cert="medium">wright</corr>
</choice>
Exactly the same information could be conveyed using the certainty and responsibility mechanisms, as follows:
<choice>
 <corr xml:id="c117">wright</corr>
 <sic>wight</sic>
</choice>
<certainty target="#c117" locus="value" degree="0.7"/>
<respons target="#c117" locus="value" resp="#ETD"/>
The choice of which mechanism to use is left to the encoder. In transcriptions where only such statements of responsibility and certainty are made as can be accommodated within the resp and cert attributes of particular elements, it will be economical to use the resp and cert attributes of those elements. Where many statements of responsibility and certainty are made which cannot be so accommodated, it may be economical to use the respons and certainty elements throughout.

The above discussion supposes that in each case an encoder is able to specify exactly what it is that one wishes to state responsibility for and certainty about. Situations may arise when an encoder wishes to make a statement concerning certainty or responsibility but is unable or unwilling to specify so precisely the domain of the certainty or responsibility. In these cases, the note element may be used with the type attribute set to ‘cert’ or ‘resp’ and the content of the note giving a prose description of the state of affairs.

11.5 Damage and Conjecture

The carrier medium of a primary source may often sustain physical damage which makes parts of it hard or impossible to read. In this section we discuss elements which may be used to represent such situations and give recommendations about how these should be used in conjunction with the other related elements introduced previously in this chapter.

11.5.1 Damage, Illegibility, and Supplied Text

The gap and supplied elements described above (section 11.3.7 Text Omitted from or Supplied in the Transcription) should be used with appropriate attributes where the degree of damage or illegibility in a text is such that nothing can be read and the text must be either omitted or supplied conjecturally or from one or more other sources. In many cases, however, despite damage or illegibility, the text may yet be read with reasonable confidence. In these cases, the following elements should be used:
  • damage contains an area of damage to the text witness.
  • damageSpan/ (damaged span of text) marks the beginning of a longer sequence of text which is damaged in some way but still legible.
As members of the class att.damaged, these elements bear the following attributes
  • att.damaged provides attributes describing the nature of any physical damage affecting a reading.
    handIn the case of damage (deliberate defacement, inking out, etc.) assignable to a distinct hand, signifies the hand responsible for the damage.
    agentcategorizes the cause of the damage, if it can be identified.
    degreeSignifies the degree of damage according to a convenient scale. The damage tag with the degree attribute should only be used where the text may be read with some confidence; text supplied from other sources should be tagged as supplied.
    groupassigns an arbitrary number to each stretch of damage regarded as forming part of the same physical phenomenon.
The class att.damaged is a subclass of the class att.dimensions, itself a subclass of the class att.ranging. Consequently these elements also therefore bear at least the following attributes:
  • att.dimensions provides attributes for describing the size of physical objects.
    extentindicates the size of the object concerned using a project-specific vocabulary combining quantity and units in a single string of words.
    unitnames the unit used for the measurement
    quantityspecifies the length in the units specified
  • att.ranging provides attributes for describing numerical ranges.
    minwhere the measurement summarizes more than one observation or a range, supplies the minimum value observed.
    maxwhere the measurement summarizes more than one observation or a range, supplies the maximum value observed.
    atLeastgives a minimum estimated value for the approximate measurement.
    atMostgives a maximum estimated value for the approximate measurement.
From the att.spanning class, damageSpan inherits the following additional attribute:
  • att.spanning provides attributes for elements which delimit a span of text by pointing mechanisms rather than by enclosing it.
    spanToindicates the end of a span initiated by the element bearing this attribute.

The following examples all refer to the recto of folio 5 of the unique manuscript of the Elder Edda. Here, the manuscript of Vóluspá has been damaged through irregular rubbing so that letters in various places are obscured and in some cases cannot be read at all.

In the first line of this leaf, the transcriber may believe that the last three letters of daga can be read clearly despite the damage:
um aldr
d<damage>aga</damage> yndisniota
If, as is often the case, the damage crosses structural divisions, so that the damage element cannot be nested properly within the containing div elements, the damageSpan element may be used, in the same way as the delSpan and addSpan elements discussed in section 11.3.4 Additions and Deletions.
<p>
<!-- ... -->
 <pb n="5r"/>
 <damageSpan agent="rubbing" extent="whole leaf" spanTo="#damageEnd"/>
</p>
<p> .... </p>
<p> ....
<pb n="5v" xml:id="damageEnd"/>
</p>
Note that in this example the spanTo element points to the next pb element rather than to an inserted anchor element, since the whole of the leaf (the text between the two pb elements has sustained damage. For other techniques of handling non-nesting information, see chapter 20 Non-hierarchical Structures.
If, as is also likely, the damage affects several disjoint parts of the text, each such part must be marked with a separate damage or damageSpan element. To indicate that each of these is to be regarded as forming part of the same damaged area, the group attribute may be used as in the following example. In this (imaginary) text of Fitzgerald's translation from Omar Khayam, water damage has affected an area covering parts of several lines
<l>The Moving Finger wri<damage agent="water" group="1">es; and</damage> having writ,</l>
<l>Moves <damage agent="water" group="1">on: nor all your</damage> Piety nor Wit</l>
<l>
 <damageSpan agent="water" group="1" spanTo="#washOut"/>Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
</l>
<l>Nor all your Tears wash <anchor xml:id="washOut"/> out a Word of it</l>

A more general solution to this problem is provided by the join element discussed in 16.7 Aggregation which may be used to link together arbitrary elements of any kind in the transcription. Where, as here, several phenomena of illegibility and conjecture all result from the one cause, an area of damage to the text — rubbing at various points — which is not continuous in the text, affecting it at irregular points, the join element may be used to indicate which tagged features are part of the same physical phenomenon.

If the damage has been so severe as to render parts of the text only imperfectly legible, the unclear element should be used to mark the fact. Returning to the Eddic example above, an encoder less confident in the daga reading, may indicate this as follows:
um aldr d<unclear reason="damage">aga</unclear> yndisniota
If it is desired to supply more information about the kind of damage, it is also possible to nest an unclear element within the damage element:
um aldr d<damage agent="rubbing">
 <unclear>aga</unclear>
</damage> yndisniota
Alternatively, the transcriber may not feel able to read the last three letters of daga but may wish to supply them by conjecture. Note the use of the resp attribute to assign the conjecture to Finnur Jónsson:
um aldr d<supplied reason="rubbing" resp="#msm">aga</supplied> yndisniota
The supplied element may if desired be enclosed within a damage element:
um aldr d<damage agent="rubbing">
 <supplied source="#msm">aga</supplied>
</damage> yndisniota
Contrast the use of gap in the next line, where the transcriber believes that four letters cannot be read at all because of the damage:
þar komr inn dimmi dreki fliugandi naþr frann
neþan <gap
  reason="illegible"
  agent="rubbing"
  quantity="4"
  unit="letter"/>
As with supplied, this gap might be enclosed by a damage element.
Where elements are nested in this way, information about agency, etc. is by default inherited. In the following imaginary example, there is a smoke-damaged part within which two stretches can be read with some difficulty, and third stretch which cannot be read at all:
<damage agent="smoke">
 <unclear>and the proof of this is</unclear>
 <gap/>
 <unclear>margin</unclear>
</damage>
The above examples record imperfect legibility due to damage. When imperfect legibility is due to some other reason (typically because the handwriting is ill-formed), the unclear element should be used without any enclosing damage element. In Robert Southey's autograph of The Life of Cowper the final six letters of attention are difficult to read because of the haste of the writing, though reasonably certain from the context.
and from time to time invited in like manner
his att<unclear>ention</unclear>
The cert attribute on the unclear element may be used to indicate the level of editorial confidence in the reading contained within it.

11.5.2 Use of the <gap>, <del>, <damage>, <unclear>, and <supplied> Elements in Combination

The gap, damage, unclear, supplied, and del elements may be closely allied in their use. For example, an area of damage in a primary source might be encoded with any one of the first four of these elements, depending on how far the damage has affected the readability of the text. Further, certain of the elements may nest within one another. The examples given in the last sections illustrate something of how these elements are to be distinguished in use. This may be formulated as follows:
  • where the text has been rendered completely illegible by deletion or damage and no text is supplied by the editor in place of what is lost: place an empty gap element at the point of deletion or damage. Use the reason attribute to state the cause (damage, deletion, etc.) of the loss of text.
  • where the text has been rendered completely illegible by deletion or damage and text is supplied by the editor in place of what is lost: surround the text supplied at the point of deletion or damage with the supplied element. Use the reason attribute to state the cause (damage, deletion, etc.) of the loss of text leading to the need to supply the text.
  • where the text has been rendered partly illegible by deletion or damage so that the text can be read but without perfect confidence: transcribe the text and surround it with the unclear element. Use the reason attribute to state the cause (damage, deletion, etc.) of the uncertainty in transcription and the cert attribute to indicate the confidence in the transcription.
  • where there is deletion or damage but at least some of the text can be read with perfect confidence: transcribe the text and surround it with the del element (for deletion) or the damage element (for damage). Use appropriate attribute values to indicate the cause and type of deletion or damage. Observe that the degree attribute on the damage element permits the encoding to show that a letter, word, or phrase is not perfectly preserved, though it may be read with confidence.
  • where there is an area of deletion or damage and parts of the text within that area can be read with perfect confidence, other parts with less confidence, other parts not at all: in transcription, surround the whole area with the del element (for deletion; or the delSpan element where it crosses a structural boundary); or the damage element (for damage). Text within the damaged area which can be read with perfect confidence needs no further tagging. Text within the damaged area which cannot be read with perfect confidence may be surrounded with the unclear element. Places within the damaged area where the text has been rendered completely illegible and no text is supplied by the editor may be marked with the gap element. For each element, one may use appropriate attribute values to indicate the cause and type of deletion or damage and the certainty of the reading.
The rules for combinations of the add and del elements, and for the interpretation of such combinations, are similar:
  • if one add element (with identifier ADD1) contains another (with identifier ADD2), then the addition ADD1 was first made to the text, and later a second addition (ADD2) was made within that added text:
    This is the text
    <add xml:id="ADD1">with some added
    <add xml:id="ADD2">(interlinear!)</add>
    material</add>
    as written.
  • if one del element contains another, and the seq attribute does not indicate otherwise, it should be assumed that the inner deletion was made before the enclosing one. In the following example, the word redundant was deleted before a second second deletion removed the entire passage:
    <del>This sentence contains
    some <del>redundant</del> unnecessary
    verbiage.</del>
  • if a del element contains an add element, the normal interpretation will be that an addition was made within a passage which was later deleted in its entirety:
    <del>This sentence was deleted
    <add>originally</add> from the text.</del>
  • if an add element contains a del element, the normal interpretation will be that a deletion was made from a passage which had earlier been added:
    <add>This sentence was added
    <del>eventually</del> to the text.</add>

11.6 Aspects of Layout

Finally in this chapter we present elements which may be used to capture aspects of the layout of material on a page where this is considered important. Methods for recording page breaks, column breaks, and line breaks in the source are described in section 3.10 Reference Systems. A similar method is provided by this module for the markup of quire or gathering boundaries, using the element gb.
  • gb/ (gathering begins) marks the point in a transcribed codex at which a new gathering or quire begins.
More detailed information about the physical make-up of a source will usually be summarized by the physDesc component of a msDesc element discussed in 10.7 Physical Description; if it is desired to structure a transcription as a sequence of blocks of text corresponding with pages or quires, the generic ab element may be used in preference to the elements div p etc.

11.6.1 Space

The author or scribe may have left space for a word, or for an initial capital, and for some reason the word or capital was never supplied and the space left empty. The presence of significant space in the text being transcribed may be indicated by the space element.
  • space indicates the location of a significant space in the copy text.
    resp (responsible party) indicates the individual responsible for identifying and measuring the space.
Note that this element should not be used to mark normal inter-word space or the like.
In line 694 of Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue in the Holkham manuscript the scribe has left a space for a word where other manuscripts read preestes:
By god if wommen had writen storyes
As <space quantity="7" unit="char"/> han within her oratoryes
The supplied element discussed in the previous section may be used to supply the text presumed missing:
By god if wommen had writen storyes
As <supplied reason="space" resp="#ETD" source="#Hg">preestes</supplied>
han within her oratoryes
Here, the fact of the space within the manuscript is indicated by the value of the reason attribute. The source of the supplied text is shown by the value of the source attribute as the Hengwrt manuscript; the transcriber responsible for supplying the text is ES.

11.6.2 Lines

The most common form of marking of text in manuscripts is by lines written under, beside, or through the text. The lines themselves may be of various types: they may be solid, dashed or dotted, doubled or tripled, wavy or straight, or a combination of these and other renderings. The line may be used for emphasis, or to mark a foreign or technical term, or to signal a quotation or a title, etc.: the elements emph, foreign, term, mentioned, title may be used for these. Frequently, a scholar may judge that a line is used to delete text: the del element is available to indicate this. In all these cases, the rend attribute may be used on these or other elements to indicate that the text is marked by a line and the style of the line. Thus, Lawrence's deletion by strike-through of my in the autograph of Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani is noted:
For I hate this
<del rend="strikethrough" hand="#dhl">my</del> body,
which is so dear to me
There will be instances, however, where a scholar wishes only to register the occurrence of lines in the text, without making any judgement as to what the lines signify. In these the hi element may be used, with the rend attribute to mark the style of line. In the manuscript of a letter by Robert Browning to George Moulton-Barrett the underlining of the phrase had obtained all the letters to Mr Boyd may be marked-up as follows:
I have once — by declaring I would prosecute
by law — hindered a man's proceedings who
<hi rend="underline">had obtained all the letters
to Mr Boyd</hi>
The above examples presume the common case where a single word or phrase is marked by a line, with no doubt as to where the marking begins or ends and with no overlapping of the area of text with other marked areas of text. Where there is doubt, the certainty element may be used to record the doubt. In the Browning example cited above the underlining actually begins half-way under who, and this uncertainty could be remarked as follows:
I have once — by declaring I would prosecute
by law — hindered a man's proceedings who
<hi xml:id="cstart1" rend="underline">had obtained all
the letters to Mr Boyd</hi>
<!-- ... -->
<certainty target="#cstart1" locus="start" degree="0.70">
 <desc>may begin with previous word</desc>
</certainty>

Where the area of text marked overlaps other areas of text, for example crossing a structural division, one of the spanning mechanisms mentioned above must be used; for example where the line is thought to mark a deletion, the delSpan element may be used. Where it is desired simply to record the marking of a span of text in circumstances where it is not possible to surround the text with a hi element, the span element may be used with the rend or type attribute indicating the style of line-marking.

More work needs to be done on clarifying the treatment of other textual features marked by lines which might so overlap or nest. For example, in many Middle English manuscripts (e.g. the Jesus and Digby verse collections), marginal sidebars may indicate metrical structure: couplets may be linked in pairs, with the pairs themselves linked into stanzas. Or, marginal sidebars may indicate emphasis, or may point out a region of text on which there is some annotation: in many manuscripts of Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue lines 655–8 are marked with nesting parentheses against which the scribe has written nota.

At the lowest level, all such features could be captured by use of the note element, containing a prose description of the manuscript at this point, enhanced by a link to a visual representation (or facsimile) of the feature in question. It is not yet clear how best to mark up such phenomena so as to obtain more usefully structured encodings. For example, in the Chaucer example just cited, one may wish to record that the nota is written in the Hengwrt manuscript in the right margin against a single large left parenthesis bracketing the four lines, with two right parentheses in the right margin bracketing two overlapping pairs of lines: the first and third, the second and fourth. The note element allows us to record that the scribe wrote nota, but is not well-adapted to show that the nota points both at all four lines and at two pairs of lines within the four lines.

11.7 Headers, Footers, and Similar Matter

Such information as page numbers, signatures, or catchwords may be recorded in a specialised fw element provided for that purpose. Although the name derives from the term forme work, used in description of early printed documents (the ‘forme’ being the block used to hold movable type), the fw element may be used for such features of any document, written or printed. Note that the purpose of this element is to record page numbers etc. actually present in the document being encoded, not necessarily to provide a complete or accurate pagination of it.

Information about pagination etc. may also be provided using the n attribute of the pb or gb elements, or by other appropriate milestone elements, as further discussed in section 3.10 Reference Systems: since this information is usually provided by the encoder, it is not subject to the constraint that it should be present only if textually present in the source being encoded. In text-critical situations it may be useful to provide both a normalised version of the pagination and a representation of the catch-word or numbering, especially when the latter presents a variant reading, or is significant for compositor identification.
  • fw (forme work) contains a running head (e.g. a header, footer), catchword, or similar material appearing on the current page.
The fw element may be used to encode any of the unchanging portions of a page forme, such as:
  • running heads (whether repeated or changing on every page, or alternating pages)
  • running footers
  • page numbers
  • catch-words
  • other material repeated from page to page, which falls outside the stream of the text
It should not be used for marginal glosses, annotations, or textual variants, which should be tagged using gloss, note, or the text-critical tags described in chapter 12 Critical Apparatus, respectively.
For example:
<fw type="head" place="top-centre">Poëms.</fw>
<fw type="pageNum" place="top-right">29</fw>
<fw type="sig" place="bot-centre">E3</fw>
<fw type="catch" place="bot-right">TEMPLE</fw>

11.8 Other Primary Source Features not Covered in these Guidelines

We repeat the advice given at the beginning of this chapter, that these recommendations are not intended to meet every transcriptional circumstance ever likely to be faced by any scholar. They are intended rather as a base to enable encoding of the most common phenomena found in the course of scholarly transcription of primary source materials. These guidelines particularly do not address the encoding of physical description of textual witnesses: the materials of the carrier, the medium of the inscribing implement, the organisation of the carrier materials themselves (as quiring, collation, etc.), authorial instructions or scribal markup, etc., except insofaras these are involved in the broader question of manuscript description, as addressed by the msdescription module described in chapter 10 Manuscript Description.

11.9 Module for Transcription of Primary Sources

The module described in this chapter makes available the following components:
Modul transcr: Transcription of primary sources
The selection and combination of modules to form a TEI schema is described in 1.2 Defining a TEI Schema.

Inhalt « 10 Manuscript Description » 12 Critical Apparatus

Noten
33.
The coordinate space may be thought of as a grid superimposed on a rectangular space. Rectangular areas of the grid are defined as four numbers a b c d: the first two identify the grid point which is at the upper left corner of the rectangle; the second two give the grid point located at the lower right corner of the rectangle. The grid point a b is understood to be the point which is located a points from the origin along the x (horizontal) axis, and b points from the origin along the y (vertical) axis.
34.
The points attribute supplies a ‘points specification’ in the same form as that required by the <polyline> or <polygon> elements in the SVG standard. See http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/shapes.html#PointsBNF
35.
The coordinate space used here is based on pixels, but the mapping between pixels and units in the coordinate space need not be one-to-one; it might be convenient to define a more delicate grid, to enable us to address much smaller parts of the image. This can be done simply by supplying appropriate values for the attributes which define the coordinate space; for example doubling them all would map each pixel to two grid points in the coordinate space.
36.
The image is taken from the collection at http://ancilla.unice.fr/Illustr.html, and was digitized from a copy in the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, by whose kind permission it is included here
37.
The manuscript contains several other substitutions, ignored here for the sake of clarity.

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