3. LocalEncoding that Varies from Document to Document |
3.1 Spacing 3.1 SpacingRecent work with stylesheets has taught us that paying attention to and regularizing the encoding of white space is important as we prepare manuscripts for display on the site. The most important guideline is simply to be conscious of spacing as you transcribe and encode, but here are a few more specific rules to follow:
[To learn how to encode Whitman's use of intentional space within lines, go here] 3.2 DeletionsWhat to MarkUse <del> to mark a letter, word or passage that has been deleted by any method. Use common sense when marking deletions; if an entire line has been crossed out, for example, but the horizontal line does not physically intersect with a comma that follows the passage, you should still assume that the comma is intended to be included in the deletion. In cases of doubt, please consult Ed Folsom or Kenneth Price for his reading of the passage. Attributestype is the only required attribute for the del element. Possible values are:
NOTE: Each of these types of deletion can occur in combination with additions; "overwrite" does by definition, and "pasteover" almost always does. For information about marking combinations of additions and deletions, see section 3.4, "Additions and Deletions in Combination." Whitman's overstrikes are usally emphatic and easily recognizable, but occasionally one sees a mark which may be either an overstrike OR a stray pen mark. In these cases, first check with Kenneth Price or Ed Folsom, and then use the optional cert attribute to indicate your degree of certainty that the passage has been deleted. For example, on the Duke manuscript "I see who you are," a few lines from the bottom, the word "editor" appears to be struckthrough. This might be tagged as follows: <del type="overstrike" cert="80%">editor</del> Deletion of Longer PassagesOccasionally you will encounter a long passage that has been deleted. For these passages, use <del> unless doing so would create a nesting problem. For example, consider again the manuscript in the example above. Here, the long vertical strike is marked simply by enclosing the entire poem with a del element thus: . . . Imagine, however, a different scenario, one in which a deleted passage consists of the last two words of one line segment <seg> and all of the next line segment. Because using <seg><del></seg><seg></seg></del> would violate the nesting rule, using paired <del> </del> tags to mark this kind of deletion is unacceptable. Instead, you must use the elements delSpan and anchor, the first to mark the beginning of the deleted passage and the second to mark the end. As with <del>, the type attribute is required for <delSpan>. The to attribute is also required, since it provides a "pointer" to the anchor. The value of the to attribute must be the same as the value of the required id attribute on the corresponding anchor element. To create these, use "d" (for a deletion) plus the next available number ("d1" for the first <delSpan>, "d2" for the second, and so on). Please note: if the manuscript calls for multiple <delSpan> elements, you will need to use distinct identifiers for each anchor. In other words, you may only use "d1" or "d2" once in a document; subsequent identifiers will have to be "d3," "d4," etc. Consider as an example the Duke manuscript "To be at all". If we ignore other complexities for the moment, the multi-segment deletion in the line that begins "One no more than" should be marked as follows: . . . 3.3 AdditionsWhat to MarkUse <add> to mark any part of the text whose placement, ink, etc. clearly indicate that it was added to the manuscript after the surrounding text was written. AttributesTwo attributes are required on the <add> element: type and place. For type, the possible values are:
For place, the possible values are:
Addition of Longer PassagesThe rules for marking long additions are similar to those for marking long deletions. Use <add> unless doing so would create a nesting problem, and use the elements addSpan and anchor to mark the beginning and end of a deleted passage that doesn't nest within other elements. <addSpan> has three requried attributes: to, type, and place. Available values for type and place are the same as those listed above for <add>. The value of the to attribute must be the same as the value of the required id attribute on the corresponding anchor element. To create these, use "a" (for "addition") plus the next available number ("a1" for the first <addSpan>, "a2" for the second, and so on). Transpositions Noted by Arrows or AsterisksSome manuscripts have brackets, arrows, and/or a series of asterisks to indicate Whitman's desire to move a line or lines to a different place in the poem. To encode this phenomenon, we use the <transpose> element. In this example, Whitman has bracketed one line and indicated with an asterisk in the margin that the line should be moved down. The encoding for this section follows, with the tagging most pertinent to the transposition in bold. 3.4 Additions and Deletions in CombinationSubstitutionsVery frequently, Whitman's additions are not merely appended to earlier text but are substituted for earlier text. It is our policy to link the deleted and added portions by marking each as a reading <rdg> within an <app> element. ("App" is short for "apparatus entry." For information about the use of this element in other contexts, see chapter 19 of the TEI Guidelines.) Each <app> will contain at least two <rdg>s, and may contain up to five. The <app> element requires no attributes; the rdg element requires the varSeq ("variant sequence") attribute, the value of which is a single-digit number that indicates the relative order in which the present reading is presumed to have been written. For this example line segment, the markup would look like so: <l><seg>Old Asia's For obvious reasons, usually the first reading will contain a deletion and the second reading will contain an addition. This is not always true, however. You may come across instances where multiple variants are left undeleted. In this case, the first <rdg> will contain no other elements, just the transcribed word(s). Or you may find that a second reading was added but subsequently rejected in favor of the first. In this case, the second <rdg> will contain both an <add> and a <del>. (See "Nesting <add> and <del>" below for an explanation of how to arrange these.) If the state of the manuscript makes it difficult to determine with certainty the order of the readings, a resp attribute is available for the <rdg> element; the value of this attribute can be used to identify (by initials) the person responsible for asserting an order of readings. OverwritingYou will sometimes encounter a substitution in which a letter or word has been overwritten with another letter or word. In such cases, the value of the place attribute on the add element is "over"; the value of the type attribute for both the <add> and <del> elements is "overwrite." For example, consider this manuscript excerpt, in which Whitman has changed the "e" from upper- to lower-case. The markup for this word is: <app> PastingFairly frequently, Whitman made substitutions by pasting one page or scrap over another. Treat such cases as you would other substitutions, by using the app, rdg, del, and add elements. For the type attribute on <del>, use the value "pasteover." The type attribute of the <add> should be given the value "pasteon," and the place attribute should be given the value "over." For an example, look at this manuscript leaf. . . . Nesting <add> and <del>Of course, not all combinations of <add> and <del> are substitutions. Consider this manuscript excerpt. To indicate that the addition was deleted, the add element should be nested within the del element: from There are a number of other ways in which Whitman combined additions and deletions—probably too many to cover each one separately here. You should be able to handle almost all situations you encounter by applying these principles and rules:
To understand how to approach a complicated series of additions and deletions, take a look at this manuscript line segment. Note that it shows two substitutions: the word "for" replaces "to," and the phrase "time's hourly ceaseless" replaces "the varied." The fact that "hourly" and "ceaseless" have then been deleted adds a further complication. This is how the segment should be encoded: <seg>No more 3.5 Illegible or Missing TextOften while encoding, we find words or marks that we cannot decipher, or we postulate readings that we do not feel completely confident about. Since we have decided to encode all of Whitman's text, no matter how indecipherable, we have tags to help us record illegible or missing text.
<gap>: This element is used when text is absolutely unreadable, when, for example, it has been torn or cut away, obscured by deletion, or is simple illegible. Each <gap> needs a reason attribute, and you have the choice of three values, "cut away," "deletion, illegible," or "illegible." Note: gap is an empty element (i.e, does not require a close tag).
<supplied>: Sometimes a secondary source can supply a reliable transcription of text that is at present illegible, as for example when a transcription was done by an institution or editor before damage occurred. The supplied element is used in such situations. Enclose that part of the text that has been supplied in the supplied element, and use the reason attribute values listed for <gap> above to state the cause of the loss of text. Also insert a source attribute with a value that notes your source for the supplied text. For example, this excerpt is from our transcription of "Ashes of Roses":
<p><unclear>: When you believe you have an accurate reading of a difficult-to-read passage, but you are not completely confident, mark the questionable reading with the unclear element. Use the reason attribute to state the cause of the uncertainty in transcription, selecting from the values described above under <gap>. Use the cert (certainty) attribute to indicate the degree of confidence in the transcription. Its value will be a numeric percentage (e.g., "95%"). Also include a resp (responsibility) attribute to indicate your responsibility for the postulated reading, and as its value use your initials. For example, if Andy Jewell is encoding a manuscript with an unclear deleted word that he thinks might be "herbage," he inserts this markup: <unclear reason="deletion, illegible" cert="70%" resp="awj">herbage</unclear> **Remember, when the value of a "resp" attribute indicates a hand other than Whitman's, a note must be included in the <profileDesc> within the Header. Go here to read more about how to do this. 3.6 Hyphenation and Non-Standard SpellingSegments with end-hyphenationBecause we wish both to record the lineation of the copy text and to enable searches for words that are broken by end-line hyphenation, we use the <orig> tag with the reg attribute to record the original and regularized readings. Tag such instances in the following way: <l> Non-Standard Spelling
The sic element is used to represent a mistake by the author. The required attribute corr provides a correction. These corrections will enable searches to use standardized spelling and not require the searcher to know, for example, that Whitman misspelled "Buildings" as "Buldings" in this manuscript. This word should be marked up in this way:
<sic corr="Buildings">Buldings</sic> Sometimes what you might think of as a spelling error would more accurately be termed an alternate spelling. For words that are spelled in idiosyncratic—though not exactly incorrect—ways, use the orig tag and its required reg attribute. This element and attribute pair works in the same way as sic and corr; that is, Whitman's spelling is transcribed and the standardized spelling is recorded as the value of the reg attribute. As an example, look at Whitman's spelling of "Shakespeare" in this image. Since this spelling of Shakespeare's name is one he himself used (and he never, as far as we know, used "Shakespeare"), it should be encoded as follows: <orig reg="Shakespeare">Shakspere</orig> 3.7 Unusual Characters and MarksXML supports only the ASCII character set, which roughly corresponds with the set of characters on a standard keyboard. Not all of the characters you might encounter in a Whitman manuscript are part of the ASCII character set, so to represent one of these unsupported characters you will need to use the appropriate Unicode number—a string of numerals that begins with an ampersand and pound sign (&#) and ends with a semicolon (;). The table below lists the Unicode numbers we are using on the project. It is important to use the numbers for the listed characters, even when it might be possible to key them in (as with the ampersand, for example) or to use a close approximation (e.g., two hyphens to represent an em-dash). For characters not listed, Unicode numbers are NOT necessary. For the characters in the left-hand column to display correctly, you must have a Unicode font installed on your computer. If you see boxes for some or all of the entries there, you can try downloading and using Bitstream Cyberbase. |
| Character | Function in Whitman | Unicode Number |
|---|---|---|
| = | Proofreader's mark for hyphen. WW sometimes uses "=" for compound words ("down=balls") and words split between two lines ("some=thing"). PLEASE NOTE that ‑ is used only when Whitman uses "="; if he uses the standard hyphen ("-"), just key it in. | ‑ |
| — | Longer dash e.g., "Not these—O none of these more" PLEASE NOTE that there should be no spaces before or after the dash, regardless of how the spacing appears on the page. | — |
| & | Indicates "and" | & |
| * | An asterisk | * |
| © | Copyright symbol | © |
| ✓ | Checkmark | ✓ |
| ½ | Used often in Bowers's system of page numbering | ½ |
| ¾ | Used to indicate the fraction, occasionally on manuscripts | ¾ |
| ¶ | Indicates beginning of new paragraph or a new line of poetry | ¶ |
| ñ | Spanish-language character, n with tilde | ñ |
| ó | An "o" with an acute accent mark (to capitalize, change to Ó) | ó |
| é | An "e" with an acute accent mark (to capitalize, change to É) | é |
| è | An "e" with a grave accent mark (to capitalize, change to È) | è |
| ☞ | A right-pointing finger | ☞ |
| ☜ | A left-pointing finger | ☜ |
| ☝ | An up-pointing finger | ☝ |
| ☟ | A down-pointing finger | ☟ |
3.8 Graphically Distinctive Text
Dotted-underlined words: Occasionally, you may encounter a manuscript with a word that has been deleted and underlined with a series of dots. This is a printer's mark for "I don't want to delete this word after all; please leave it in," or, "stet." To handle these instances, which are rare, we surround the dotted-underlined word and the <del> with the <restore> element and use the "rend" attribute. For example, in this manuscript the dotted-underlined words are encoded like this: Line indentation: Though in most cases Whitman begins lines at the left edge of the writing space, he sometimes uses line indentation in distinctive ways, as in this copy of "O Captain! My Captain!" To encode this indentation, we add the "rend" attribute to the <l> element. The value of "rend" is "indented" plus a number that indicates the relative length of the indentation. For the shortest indentation, we use "indented1"; for the longest, "indented4." |
Reference Chart for Use of the "Rend" Attribute
| Value of 'rend' attribute | Function in Whitman |
|---|---|
| underline | indicates underscored text |
| circled | used when text, typically within a note in the margin, is surrounded by a circular line in order to separate it from other text |
| bracketed | used in <title> within the <titleStmt> to distinguish derived titles |
| italic | used only in transcriptions of printed material or in project notes to mark titles of books. |
| dotted | used with <restore> |
| indented1 indented2 indented3 indented4 | added to <l> when Whitman uses staggered indentation at the beginnings of lines; the numbers indicate relative amount of indentation (1=shortest, 4=longest) |
| horbar-full horbar-short-right horbar-short-left horbar-short-center | used in <milestone> to indicate various positions and lengths of horizontal separators |
3.9 Signatures and Dates
The following example is based on this manuscript. When is a date a <dateline> and when is it a <note>?: We use the <dateline> element to note a date that is to be published with the poem and is part of the poem's meaning. As mentioned above, Whitman most often inserted these sorts of dates under the head or under his signature. On other manuscripts, Whitman has written a date that is not a <dateline> but instead is to be treated as a <note> on the page. Most of the time, these <note>s will be distinguished by their placement on the manuscript page (in a margin, a corner, or otherwise beyond the layout of the poem proper) and by their ambiguous relationship to the lines of poetry. 3.10 Other Writing in Whitman's Hand
NotesYou will sometimes come across writing on the manuscript page that is not part of the text of the poetry manuscript proper, but instead a note of some sort about it. For example, this note follows a poem, at the bottom of the page. This sort of material is encoded using the <note> element. Note also takes two required attributes: type and place. To distinguish the writing as Whitman's, use the value "authorial" for the type attribute. For the place attribute choose from the following values: "margintop," "marginbot," "marginleft," "marginright," "inline," "supralinear," or "interlinear." The example should be marked up as follows: <note type="authorial" place="marginbot"> Sometimes, Whitman will visually separate his notes from the rest of the text by drawing a boundary line, as in this example. When this happens, you need to add the rend="circled" attribute and value to <note>. (The value circled is used even though Whitman's boundary line often does not make a proper geometric "circle"). The encoding for the example would read:
Note that <p> is only used within <note> when there are multiple paragraphs within the note. Reverse-Side NotesOccasionally, Whitman will write a prose note about the poem on the reverse-side of the manuscript leaf, such as a note to the printer or a comment on the poem's placement in a larger work. These notes, though they are on the reverse side, are encoded basically the same way as the notes described above are encoded, with a few minor adjustments:
Unrelated Reverse-Side WritingIf reverse-side writing is in Whitman's hand, we encode it, regardless of its content. You will need to create a new <head> and, therefore, a second <title> in the <titleStmt> to deal with the separate intellectual unit on the reverse-side. It should be encoded to the same level as any other Whitman manuscript. Miscellaneous WritingThe note element is also used to mark other writing on the page that, while not strictly a note, is not part of the text. Examples include: page numbers, addition or subtraction problems, and question marks. Whitman's use of proofreading/typesetting marks is a special case. To encode a manuscript that has such marks, you should first decide whether the marks are being used to indicate a) changes to the base text, or b) emphasis of a typographic feature. It is our current policy to encode only marks of the first type. Examples include the caret ( ^ ) to indicate an addition, and the paragraph mark (¶) to indicate a new paragraph (in prose) or line (in verse). For instructions on encoding the caret, see 3.3 Additions. The paragraph mark should be encoded as a named character entity—¶. At present we have chosen not to encode marks of the second type, though we may in a future stage of the project return and add representions of them to our markup. Examples of marks that you should not encode include triple-underlining to emphasize capitalization and horizontal curved brackets used to indicate lack of spacing between parts of hyphenated words. Horizontal Lines
Whitman fairly often draws a line to signal the beginning or the end of a unit of text. These lines range from full page width to small bars at the left, right, or in the center. You can see an example of a small center line at the bottom of this manuscript and an example of a small line at the left at the top of this one. We take these lines to indicate some kind of division, though we make no claims about the sort of unit(s) they define. They are encoded using the empty milestone element, with "undeclared" as the value of the unit attribute and the following as possible values of the rend attribute:
The first example above should be encoded as follows:
Brackets
Whitman sometimes used brackets to group lines or other bits of text, as in this example. These should be indicated by using the span element. Like <addSpan> and <delSpan>, <span> is an empty element (i.e., consists of a single open tag), but it works in a slightly different way. In addition to the to attribute, from and value are also required. Assign the span an id—use the formula s+number—and give the "from" the same id. This, in essence, means "start from here.") The value of the value attribute will always be "bracketed." And, as with addSpan and delSpan, you must always mark the end of the bracketed section with an empty anchor element bearing an id attribute whose value corresponds with the value of the <span>'s to attribute. This is the markup for the example above:
Page NumbersWhitman's use of page numbers—combined with the history of manuscript dispersal—means we are left with both ambiguous and reliable page numbering on Whitman manuscripts. By "ambiguous," we mean manuscripts with a number, like "43," written in the top corner but no corresponding "42" or "44"; by "reliable," we mean multiple-leaf manuscripts with an ordered numbering of each leaf (ordered numbering does not mean an uninterrupted sequence that begins with "1"; instead, it means any discernable numbering system that reliably determines the leaf order). We handle these two types of page numbers in different ways. For ambiguous numbers, we use <note>. For reliable page numbering, we add an attribute to the Page Break, or <pb> element. Specifically, we add an "n" attribute with a value that corresponds to the number written on the page. So, if a three-leaf manuscript is numbered "2," "3," "4," then the <pb>s would have n="2", n="3", and n="4". Section Numbers
Sometimes you will encounter a manuscript with distinctly numbered sections, as in this example. These sections are different than linegroups, as they are typically numbered or otherwise clearly marked, and they often contain multiple linegroups. To handle section numbers, add a <head> tag immediately after the <lg> tag to note the "head" of that section. Here's how you would encode the example manuscript :
Intentional Inline SpacesWhitman will occasionally leave a blank space within a line of poetry, apparently making room for the perfect word that he has yet to discover. To encode these spaces, insert a <space> element with two attributes, dim (dimension), the value of which will almost always be "horizontal"; and extent, the value of which is expressed as a number of letters, determined by the size of the letters surrounding the space on the manuscript. The encoding for this manuscript would look like this: In other cases, Whitman will leave a blank line that indicates the intentional blank space (apparently in addition to his major poetic innovations, Whitman also developed the Mad Lib). To encode this phenomenon, use the same strategy as above, but add a "rend" attribute with the value "underline." Therefore, this example would be tagged like this:
3.11 Writing in Others' HandsWriting on the Front of the LeafUse the note element to mark letters, words, etc. that someone other than Whitman has written on the manuscript page you are encoding. As explained in section 3.9 above, this element requires both type and place attributes. For the value of type use "editorial." The possible values of the place attribute are the same as for other notes: "margintop," "marginbot," "marginleft," "marginright," or "interlinear." In addition, non-authorial notes should be given a resp attribute, with a two- or three-letter code to identify the responsible hand. Hands to which codes have been assigned are listed in the following table. Should you encounter a hand not accounted for, please email Brett Barney and Andy Jewell.
This note, written by Traubel in the bottom right corner of a poem manuscript, is encoded as follows: <note type="editorial" resp="ht" place="marginright">Resp Values Any time the resp attribute is used (whether on <note> or on <unclear>, etc.) in the body of a document, you must also include in the header some information that explains each of the values you've used. To do this, add a profileDesc (profile description) element directly before the <revisionDesc> (revision description). Inside the <profileDesc>, create a pair of handList tags and one hand element for each different value given to a resp attribute in the file. hand has two required attributes: scribe and id. The value of scribe is the full name of the person being identified as responsible for the written note. The value of id corresponds with the value assigned to the resp attribute in the body. The following excerpt is taken from the file that contains the note discussed above:
Writing on the Back of the LeafMost cases of reverse-side writing in others' hands arise from Whitman's re-use of paper. Common examples include envelopes, fan letters, and government stationery. For such situations, we use the note element with the value "project" on the type attribute to describe (not transcribe) the non-authorial writing. Unlike "authorial" and "editorial" <note>s—which should be transcribed as close as possible to their position in the manuscript—these notes must be placed within the <teiHeader>. To do this,
Note: You need not use <p>s to enclose these project notes, unless you want to write more than one paragraph of description. Here's how the envelope example above should be encoded: <teiHeader> Other CasesMaterials which accompany manuscripts (notes, transcriptions)For now, we have decided not to transcribe or encode any of the items not written by Whitman—for example, notes about the text or transcriptions—that are sometimes stored with manuscripts. Eventually, these may be encoded as separate documents and linked to the relevant manuscript, but this work will happen at a later time. Pasted clippingsSee section 3.12 below for a discussion of how to encode clippings that Whitman has incorporated into his own manuscripts. 3.11 Cutting and Pasting
Pasting that Extends the Writing AreaTo represent the seam of the two pages that have been joined, use the (empty) milestone element. Include the unit attribute with the value "glued." This example shows a manuscript that calls for such markup. Clippings Pasted to the ManuscriptSometimes Whitman pastes others' material to his manuscripts. For example, in "Ashes of Roses," Whitman has pasted a newspaper clipping in the lower left-hand corner of the first leaf. In these cases, use the <add> element and its available "type" attribute (if a manuscript's peculiarity requires it, as when pasted-on material begins in the middle of an <l> and crosses <l> boundaries, you may also use <addSpan>). In this particular case, the author of the newspaper clipping is "unknown." <add place="marginbot" hand="unk" type="pasteon"> Please remember that hands other than Whitman's must be declared in the <profileDesc>. 3.13 Page BreaksPage Breaks (<pb>) are inserted in the encoding whenever you begin the transcription of a new page (including the first one). You use <pb> tags in every document, even if they are only one page long. <pb> is an empty tag, which means that you never need to "close" <pb>, but just insert a "/" at the end of the tag. Each <pb> tag has three required attributes, "corresp," "id," and "type". The "corresp" attribute indicates the file that contains the page image, so you'll need to assign, as its value, the unique id with a three-digit suffix that indicates the page number (.001, .002, etc)—the image files will be given this name before they are mounted on our site. The "id" attribute identifies the page by "leaf" (or piece of paper) number and side—"r" for "recto" (front) or "v" for "verso" (back). The "type" attribute classifies the page as either "recto" or "verso." The "id" value must always end in either "r" or "v"—even if there is only one image. When there is only one image, the "id" value will almost always be "leaf01r." Here is an example of what the <pb> tag looks like:
The first <pb> tag goes after the <body> tag and before the first <div> or <lg>. If there are multiple pages, i.e., more than one corresponding image, simply insert a <pb> at each place in the encoding that corresponds to the beginning of a new page. Often, these will occur at the close of one linegroup (</lg1>) and before the opening of another (<lg1>). Or, commonly, you will need to include a <pb> to indicate untranscribed verso material; this should be done after the <lg> or <div> closes but before the <body> tag closes. How to Handle Unusual Document Order: In some instances, Whitman has written a single poem on the rectos of several leaves that also have poetic lines on the verso that are not part of the same poem. In this case, you must encode in a way that preserves the intellectual unity of the poem on the rectos. To do that, you will have to break the typical order of <pb> "id" values. That is, instead of "leaf01r," then "leafo1v," "leaf02r", "leaf02v", etc., encode the pages in an order that preserves the integrity of each poem. For example, if you have a manuscript with a poem written across the rectos of three leaves and other poetic lines written on the versos of leaves 1 and 3, the <pb> will have id attributes ordered like this: leaf01r, leaf02r, leaf03r, leaf01v, leaf03v. It is done this way to ensure that the material on the rectos of leaves 1-3 are all contained within the same <lg1 type="poem"> Remember: For every <pb> you insert, you need to insert an Entity Declaration in the header. 3.14 Encoding Corrected ProofsMany manuscripts in various collections combine printed text and handwritten correction, as in this example. We have developed a an encoding procedure for these manuscripts that make distinctions between the two types of texts (printed and handwritten).
Whitman will often use specialized proofreading marks to note common changes, as when he uses a triple-underline to note his desire to capitalize an uncaptalized word. In these cases, you encode using an <app> structure and "edit" as the value of the type attribute on <add> and <del>. For example, if you saw <app><rdg varSeq="1"><del type="edit">l</del></rdg><rdg varSeq="2"><add type="edit">L</add></rdg></app> We use a controlled vocabulary for both the value of the hand attribute on <add>, <del>, and <note>, and for the ink attribute on <hand>: ink="handwritten"; hand="h1". An example follows. <profileDesc> 3.15 Encoding ProseEven though we are focusing on Whitman's poetry, the manuscripts will sometimes contain prose that you will need to represent. You might encounter prose in Whitman's poetry manuscripts in a few different ways:
Transcribed prose is always encoded in the same way: the text is surrounded by <p> tags and all line breaks and line segments are ignored. 3.16 Encoding ListsWhitman sometimes made lists of words or phrases that led, in one way or another, to his poems; for example, this list has been traced to Whitman's poem "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." To encode these lists, we use the <list> element, which contains the <item> element. The structure is pretty straightfoward: at the beginning of the list, open the <list> element; then, if appropriate, insert a <head> tag; finally, encode each item on the list with an <item> tag, which is nested within <list>. The following sample encoding is based upon the manuscript example above:
3.17 Manuscripts That Are Neither Poetry Nor ProseEncoding Lines that are Neither Verse nor ProseOccasionally, you will run across a manuscript with lines that appear to have all the layout qualities of verse (hanging indentation, initial capitalization, etc.) but otherwise seem like prose notes about an idea for a poem (for an example, click here). Rather than imprecisely calling such manuscripts either "prose" or "verse," we have developed a method that acknowledges the indeterminacy of the genre. Specifically, we use the "anonymous block," or <ab> element in place of either <l> or <p> and mark line segments. Also, the <div1> type is the same we use for "mixed genre" manuscripts, "poem notes." Here's an example of how the encoding would look (click here to look at the manuscript): <-- markup is simplified --> **IMPORTANT: We don't want to use this tagging indiscriminately; it should only be used when the editors cannot decide if material is prose or poetry. Therefore, if you come across a manuscript that you think fits the description above, please consult with either Ken or Ed before you use the <ab> markup. Encoding Title PagesIf you encounter a manuscript that has only titles on it, like this one, please use this variation on the <ab> tagging described above (note the different <div1> type and attributes for the <ab> elements): <-- markup is simplified --> **NOTE: Only use "rend='underline'" if the title is indeed underlined as it is in this example. Otherwise, omit that attribute. 3.18 EnigmasWhat not to EncodeAlthough we are attempting to accurately encode all of the important aspects of Whitman's texts, absolute comprehensiveness is not our goal. Specifically, we have decided, for now at least, to ignore
Things not Covered by the GuidelinesThe encoding practices articulated in these guidelines have evolved over the last several years, and that evolution has mainly been driven by the needs of encoders, editors, programmers, and consultants as we have worked to create and deliver electronic transcriptions of individual manuscripts. When we first began, every manuscript presented a host of new challenges that had to be addresssed before the encoding could be completed. Naturally, the pace of change has slowed as the number of encoded manuscripts has grown. Even so, new puzzles continue to present themselves occasionally, and you should not be unduly disturbed if you find yourself in an encoding dilemma for which the guidelines seem to give no guidance. In such cases, you should write or call Brett Barney or Andy Jewell as soon as possible and explain as clearly as you can the nature of the difficulty. If the problem is indeed new, you may be asked to draft a summary of the issues to be sent to the members of the listserv. Dealing with UncertaintyEncoding manuscript materials is difficult for a number of reasons, and you will no doubt sometimes feel confused or indecisive. If the difficulty is one of reading or interpreting, consult with Ed Folsom or Kenneth Price. If, instead, the problem has to do with markup, consult with Brett Barney or Andy Jewell. If the problem is relatively minor, in that it doesn't prevent your continuing to work on other parts or aspects of the manuscript, you might decide to handle the problem in the best way you know how and leave yourself and the editors a detailed comment—in the file itself—about the problem and how you've handled it. Then you and they can return to it later. Do this by writing the comment and then surrounding it with these characters: <!-- -->This sequence of characters signals the computer's SGML processor to ignore everything that comes between the first and last marks. Alternatively, you can write your comment and wrap it in a <what> element. This is an element we have borrowed from the Brown Women Writers Project, and it can be used in essentially the same way as the "commenting out" convention explained above. 3.19 Work Relationships and Date InformationAs part of the header, we encode the relationship of the individual manuscript to a "work" (or "works"). As opposed to a document, which is a particular instatiation of a poem or book, etc., a "work" is the abstract idea of a poem or book, etc. We name the work according to the last instance published in Whitman's lifetime. For example, the work "Song of Myself" refers not to any particular manuscript or printed version of that poem, but to all of the versions collectively. Individual documents of that work include: the poem printed in the "deathbed edition," titled "Song of Myself"; the first, untitled version of the poem in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass; manuscript drafts of lines included in the poem; and notebooks that contain ideas and trial phrases that contributed to the composition of the poem. We encode this work relationship at the beginning of the transcription file, immediately before the <teiHeader> element. The following example is taken from the transcription of this manuscript): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> To encode the work relationships, we must first look up the work ID. A table of work IDs can be found here in the reference section of the Encoding Guidlines. The ID, which is a string of characters beginning "xxx" and ending with a five-digit number, corresponds to a work file which will contain prose descriptions of the compositional history of the work as well as connect the transcription files with other elements of the Whitman Archive. The ID is inserted two places: in the entity declaration and as the value of the "entity" attribute in the "work" element. In addition to this ID, project editors also assign either "high" or "low" as the value of "cert" to describe their confidence in connecting the individual manuscript to the work. For a manuscript with lines that are identical or very close to a published poem, the certainty will be "high"; notes that describe an idea in a way that bears a general resemblence to a published poem will get a "low" certainty. The final part of the <relations> section is a brief prose description of the publication history of the work. This editorial note will be displayed along with the transcription on the site. If there is something distinctive and noteworthy about the manuscript, the editor may also insert a project note within the <noteStmt>. A new <work> element, with a prose description, is used for every work related to the document. All dates within the prose description are tagged with a <date> element with a "value" attribute that records the date in the form YYYY-MM-DD, (or, if appropriate, just YYYY). Any titles that are normally italicized need to be marked with <hi rend="italic"> Dating the ManuscriptWe have recently begun inserting information in the transcription files that will allow us both to sort manuscripts by composition date and to provide users with a note about that date. Here is an example, taken from the same manuscript transcription as the sample above:
There are two major steps to inserting the dating information. The first is the insertion of the <date> element within <bibl>. Within this element we insert either the year of composition ("1888"), the year plus qualifying language ("About 1888"), a date range ("1867-1888"), or whatever brief description of the date is appropriate. (We have decided to only list the year in this space, even when month and day information is available.) The <date> element takes three required attributes: "certainty," "value," and "id." The value of "certainty" can be low (when we only have a conjectural date to offer), high (when we are fairly certain about the composition date), or absolute (when Whitman dated the manuscript or there is some other very conclusive evidence of its composition date). The value of "value" is a regularized date, written as "YYYY" or, in the case of a range, "YYYY/YYYY" (the first year represents the earliest year in the range; the second year represents the latest year). The value of "id" is always "dat1." The second step is to insert a prose note within the <noteStmt> that describes the reasoning behind our dating of the manuscript. This <note> takes two attributes: "type='project'" and "target='dat1'" (required). The "target" attribute allows us to associate the dating information with the <date> in the <sourceDesc>. The prose note will display below the transcription, giving users fuller information about when Whitman wrote the manuscript. |
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