Teach Yourself TEI

This page lists some generic TEI introductory readings and manuals, and also a selection of tutorial guides prepared by members of the TEI community for their own needs. Any project using the TEI has to make its own decisions about which parts of the scheme to use, and how; consequently these manuals, guides, project notes etc. reflect a healthy variety of views, as well as varying degrees of complexity or sophistication. We've tried to characterize them in broad terms, but for the full scoop on each project, you'll probably want to visit its associated description on the TEI Projects Page, where you may also find other useful leads for projects like yours.

If you have, or know of, tutorial materials about the TEI that are not listed below, please let us know.

Generic tutorials

  1. Kevin S. Hawkins, Introduction to XML for Text: This is meant to be a starting point, to be read even before A Gentle Introduction to XML (a chapter of the full TEI Guidelines which provides a technical introduction that defines and describes elements, attributes, entities, validity, well-formedness, schemas and DTDs).
  2. TEI by Example. A step-by-step tutorial guide to the use of TEI, sponsored by The Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) of the Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) of King's College London, and the Department of Information Studies of University College London.
  3. Lou Burnard, What is the Text Encoding Initiative? "This book aims to showcase a few of the many varieties of TEI markup without going into much detail for any of them. We hope it will be accessible to a wide readership"
  4. C.M. Sperberg-McQueen and Lou Burnard, TEI Lite: Encoding for Interchange: an introduction to the TEI. This is the original generic TEI Tutorial, designed to meet the needs of 90% of the TEI community, 90% of the time.
  5. Kevin S. Hawkins, Introduction to the TEI Header. This is a brief introduction to the header (metadata block) of a TEI document as it relates to library cataloging practice.
  6. How to markup e-texts (a page of links to translations of several TEI documents, with introductory and explanatory materials; in Japanese)
  7. Fotis Jannidis, TEI in der Praxis. An overview and summary of TEI in practice, extracted from the Jahrbuch für Computerphilologie Online(1997); in German.
  8. Marjorie Burghart, Editer des sources historiques en ligne grâce à XML - Un guide pratique. Lyon, 2010; in French.

Guides to Local Practice

  1. Bingenheimer, Marcus et al (2008) TEI shi yong zhi nan: Yun yong TEI chu li zhong wen wen xian (TEI User Guide: How to use TEI to process Chinese documents): 2nd edition local copy.
  2. Boot, P. and Stronks, E. (2002).Emblem Project Utrecht (EPU): Technical Guidelines. Utrecht University.
  3. Chesnutt, David R., Hockey, Susan M., Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. (1999) Markup Guidelines for Documentary Editions. Model Editions Partnership.
  4. Dufournaud, N., Demonet, M.-L., Uetani, T., Vincent, T.; rev. Burnard, L. and Fekete, J.-D. (2009). Manuel d’encodage XML-TEI Renaissance et temps modernes (Imprimés - manuscrits). Last updated 1 July 2009.
  5. Elliott, T. et al (2001). EpiDoc: Guidelines for structured markup of epigraphic texts. Last updated 11 July 2002.
  6. Finney, T. J. (2001).Converting Leiden-style editions to TEI Lite XML(local copy). Last updated 19 June 2001.
  7. Women Writers Project Training Materials. Northeastern University, USA.
  8. Women Writers Project Guide to Scholarly Text Encoding. Brown University, USA. Last updated 2007.
  9. Gorman, Peter C., ed (2000). Guidelines for markup of electronic texts. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Last updated 16 February 2007
  10. Heiden, S.; Guillot, C; Lavrentiev, A. (2005) Manuel d'encodage XML-TEI des textes de la Base de Francais Médiéval
  11. HTML Writers Guild (2000). An introduction to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) DTD (Project Gutenberg's Introduction to using TEI). Last updated 17 February 2001.
  12. Kushigian, N. and Payne, C. British Women Romantic Poets Project: Encoding Guidelines. University of California, Davis.
  13. Mahoney, Anne et al (2000). Introduction to Structured Markup: How to markup a text. Last updated 12 May 2005.
  14. Menota Project (2008). Menota handbook, Version 2.0 beta. Last updated March 2008. Version 1.1. Last updated May 2004.
  15. Mueller, Martin (2002). A very gentle introduction to the TEI markup language (local copy).
  16. Perathoner, Marcello (July 2003). The Project Gutenberg Guide to encoding (local copy).
  17. Proffitt, Merillee et al (updated 8 Oct 2002). Digital Scriptorium transcription DTD: A TEI-Based Tag set for Manuscript Transcription (local copy).
  18. Scholze, Hannelore and Goldstrassa, Thomas (2001). TEI Lite – Vernetzung von Verführungsszenarien. Prokect Loreley, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
  19. Seaman, D. (1995). The Electronic Text Center Introduction to TEI and Guide to Document Preparation. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia, USA. Last updated: Spring 1995.
  20. Smith, Natalia, Sexton, Jill and McKim, Joshua. Encoding Guidelines for the Documenting the American South database. Last updated December 2004.
  21. Sperberg-McQueen, C.M. et al (1996).Rules for use of TEI Lite in CIC E-Text Projects. Local copy.
  22. Vanhoutte, Edward (1997). ...en doende denkt dan nog. SGML, TEI en editiewetenschap. Last updated 26 March 2001.
  23. Vanhoutte, Edward (2001). It's all in the Head(er): From minimal to optimal use of the TEI Header (local copy). Last updated March 2001.
  24. Vanhoutte, Edward and Ron Van den Branden (2003). DALF guidelines for the description and encoding of modern correspondencematerial, version 1.0
  25. Willett, P. Victorian Women Writers Project Encoding Guidelines. Last updated: 02 May 2000.
  26. Willett, P. et al (1999). TEI Text Encoding in Libraries Guidelines for Best Encoding Practices. Version 2.1 (27 March 2006).
  27. Willett, P. et al (2001). CIC Wright 19th century American Fiction Project: Encoding Guidelines (includes extensive tutorial material).
  28. Williams, J.P. and Powell, C. (1996, 1998). American Verse Project:HTI Style Guide for American Verse Project and Middle English Texts. Humanities Text Initiative, University of Michigan. Local copy last updated 29 January 1998.

Materials from Workshops and Presentations

Listed here are a selection of materials presented at workshops and other events, which may contain useful information such as slides, examples, and lecture notes. For more events, see the events calendar.

  • TEI @ Oxford site contains the most recent workshop materials provided by Lou Burnard, James Cummings and Sebastian Rahtz in teaching TEI and related workshops. All materials released under a Creative Commons Attribution license. [Please note, this site is unmaintained, may disappear, and will become increasingly dated as none of those involved work there any more.]
  • Materials from workshops on digital publishing offered by the University of Michigan Library.
  • Sofia Workshopa four day course on the TEI by Syd Bauman, Lou Burnard, Matthew Driscoll, Julia Flanders, and Sebastian Rahtz, organised in conjunction with the 2005 TEI members meeting, 24th-27th October 2005.
  • Würzburg Workshop, a two day workshop on TEI P5 by Lou Burnard and Sebastian Rahtz, University of Wuerzburg, 14-15 October 2005.
  • Introduction to XML and the TEI, introductory course developed by Susan Schreibman at the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities; last updated 20 June 2004)
  • The sixth Forlí TEI Workshop, a three day workshop by Lou Burnard, on using TEI in corpus work, Scuola Superiore di Lingue Moderne per interpreti e traduttori, Universita di Bologna, 28-31 March 2006.
  • Annotation of Language Resources, one-week workshop by Tomaž Erjavec and Anne-Marie Mineur, ESSLLI 2002, Trento, August 2002
  • Materials from workshops and seminars offered by the Women Writers Project