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Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
TY - ELEC
A1 - Jenstad, Janelle
A1 - Virani, Zaqir
A1 - Landels-Gruenewald, Tye
A1 - Milligan, Sarah
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - Encode a Primary Source Transcription
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
PY - 2020
DA - 2020/06/26
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/encoding_primary_sources.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/xml/standalone/encoding_primary_sources.xml
ER -
RT Web Page
SR Electronic(1)
A1 Jenstad, Janelle
A1 Virani, Zaqir
A1 Landels-Gruenewald, Tye
A1 Milligan, Sarah
A6 Jenstad, Janelle
T1 Encode a Primary Source Transcription
T2 The Map of Early Modern London
WP 2020
FD 2020/06/26
RD 2020/06/26
PP Victoria
PB University of Victoria
LA English
OL English
LK https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/encoding_primary_sources.htm
Junior Programmer, 2018-present. Tracey is a PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Victoria. Her research focuses on Critical Technical Practice, more specifically Algorhythmics. She is interested in how technologies communicate without humans, affecting social and cultural environments in complex ways.
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.
Research Assistant, 2013-2014. Zaqir Virani completed his MA at the University of Victoria in April 2014. He received his BA from Simon Fraser University in 2012, and has worked as a musician, producer, and author of short fiction. His research focused on the linkage of sound and textual analysis software and the work of Samuel Beckett.
Research Assistant, 2012–2013. Cameron Butt completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2013. He minored in French and has a keen interest in Shakespeare, film, media studies, popular culture, and the geohumanities.
Research Assistant, 2012-2014.
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–present. Associate Project Director, 2015–present. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Personification of envy. Appears as an allegorical character in mayoral shows.
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
s/heand
his/herto
theyand
theirrespectively.
formworkto
forme work.
As an encoder working on a primary source document, your main job is to represent the
original source document as faithfully as possible. In other words, you are classifying
different components of the document (front matter, body, back matter, title page,
chapter, etc.), and describing how things appear (small-caps, italic, centre-aligned, and
so on). The overriding concern here is to
If you are encoding a primary source transcription from EEBO-TCP, refer to the instructions for preparing an EEBO transcription.
Encode your primary source text in six passes. Generally, you want to do the block-level elements first and then proceed to the inline elements (see w3schools.com). Most of our encoders check the transcription while they are encoding the block-level elements. While some variation in workflow is acceptable, you always want to anticipate the possibility (especially with long documents) that someone else may have to pick up where you have left off. Proceed as follows with primary documents:
linguistic codesof the work (McGann 13). These codes include the content divisions in a work (title page, dedicatory epistle, introduction, books, chapters, sections, tables, indices, colophon), the basic organizational blocks within those divisions (paragraphs, stanzas, lines), and illustrations. Open, rename, and save the appropriate template that will guide you through this first pass. In this pass, you will encode the
bibliographical codesof the work (McGann 13). These codes—functions of the way the printed book is produced—include page breaks, line beginnings, running titles, hyphens, catchwords, and signature numbers. We describe typographical features (italic letters, size of font, dropped caps) using the
The primary division in your text is between the
The
The front matter in a work includes the title page and other preliminaries. If the work
you are encoding includes a dedicatory epistle, a letter to the reader, an introduction,
a table, and/or a frontispiece, these paratexts belong in the
For our front matter, we’ll use the encoding of a title page in the short document called The Cold Year. You can see the original page on the EEBO site.
In our first pass through the text, we transcribe the text and tag the components of
the title page. We use the moleebo
. This is documented elsewhere. After the page-break comes the
titlePage element, and this is the only other component of the
Inside
In any given title page, these may occur in almost any order, although it’s
most likely that the titles will appear near the top, and the imprint information near
the bottom. There are many other elements that may appear in a title page, including
Notice that inside the block
elements, so line beginnings must be explicit.
The main text of the work goes in the
We use the
When you are encoding transcriptions of primary sources, give the
In addition to
Most of the primary works in the
When transcribing, editors may come across illegible characters for various reasons.
For example:
These missing characters need to be represented in our transcriptions if
possible. Attempt to decipher them and mark them up with the
Once you have chosen an appropriate value for the
Finally, add an editorial
note with a prose explanation, including another
Here is an example of how to properly use the
The transcribers for EEBO-TCP have been cautious and have left gaps where they were
uncertain of a reading. Those transcribers are not early modernists; we can often supply
the gaps simply by consulting the page images and exercising our better knowledge of
early modern texts. We can also consult other editions of a text to see the choices
other editors have made. When we supply text that has been omitted from an EEBO-TCP
transcription but is clear enough in the page-image to be transcribed without further investigation,
we do not use the
However, sometimes even MoEML editors cannot decipher missing characters. In this case, the self-closing
For example:
Editors may also encounter misprinted text in primary source documents. For example, the following passage from Thomas Middleton’s
herin the text proper is misprinted as
het:
On the toppe of the Caſtle, Honor manifeſted by a faire Starre in his hand, Religion with a Temple on(sig. C1r; emphasis added).het head, Piety with an Altar, Commiſeration with a melting or burning Heart
When encoding this passage, we must mark up and, if possible, fix this misprinting. Tag
the misprinted text using the
Suppose, however, that the encoder could not confidently interpolate the misprinted
text. In such an instance, they would simply tag the misprinted text using the
Once you have encoded the basic structure of the work and its linguistic codes, then you will go back and add mark-up to indicate how the text is disposed in the physical space of the book. Your mark-up tells the truth about the material book that is the documentary witness for our edition.
Use a self-closing
sig. A2v
To the Deſeruer of all thoſe Honors,
which the Cuſtomary Rites of this Day,
And the generall Loue of this City beſtow vpon
him; Sir Iohn Svvinerton, Knight, Lord
Maior of the renowmed City
of London.
To transcribe the lineation of this passage in XML, we must include a self-closing
Line beginnings in early modern primary sources often occur in the middle of words. In such instances, the line beginning is preceded by a hyphen, which signifies to the reader that the word continues on the next line. Consider, for example, the last sentence from the dedicatory epistle of Dekker’s
sig. A2rMy wiſhes being (as euer they haue bene) to meete with a
ny Obiect, whoſe reflexion may preſent to your Eyes, that
Loue and Duty, In which [I ſtand Bounden To your Lordſhip.]
This passage requires a slightly different markup method to represent the lineation.
Since the first line beginning occurs in the middle of the word -
) should not be transcribed within the text string:
A hyphen at the end of a line will sometimes be from a hyphenated word that simply happens to be split at the hyphen by the line beginning. For example, the second line in the opening of Dekker’s dedicatory epistle:
sig. A2rHonour (this day) takes you by the Hand,
and giues you welcomes into your New-
Office of Pretorſhip.
The second line beginning of this sentence occurs in the middle of the hyphenated phrase
-
) and encode the line beginning as a regular line
beginning:
Hyphens may also occur in catchwords at the bottom of a page. These are not actually
line beginnings since often the word appears in full on the following page. In these cases,
as with hyphens in phrases, simply transcribe the hyphen character-
.
Use a self-closing
Note that, if you are encoding a transcription based on facsimiles (page-images
) from either Early English Books Online (EEBO) or the English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA), you should provide links to the facsimiles for users to access. Note that EEBO is behind a pay-wall, so only some users will be able to access the links. Alternatively, EBBA is open-source, meaning that all users will be able to access the links.
Each facsimile in EEBO has been assigned a document identifier and a page number (note that the page numbers assigned to the facsimiles will almost invariably differ from the material book’s page numbers). You can determine the document identifier and the page number of any given facsimile by analyzing the http:// address. For example, consider this facsimile of Anthony Munday’s http://eebo.chadwyck.com/fetchimage?vid=13311&page=3
. Its document identifier is 13311 and its page number is 3.
To link to an EEBO facsimile, add a
moleebo:
, meaning
The following example demonstrates how to encode a link to the aforementioned facsimile of
Whenever you insert a
Unlike EEBO, each facsimile in EBBA has been assigned only a document identifier. Page numbers are not necessary because each facsimile depicts an entire broadside ballad (http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/22002/image
. Its document identifier is 22002.
To link to an EBBA facsimile, add a molebba:
, meaning MoEML link to EBBA
, followed by the document identifier assigned to the facsimile.
The following example demonstrates how to encode a link to the aforementioned facsimile of
Because broadside ballads were printed in two pages on a single broadside sheet, most transcriptions of broadside ballads will require two
Most pages in early modern books will include text in both the head margin and bottom margin of the page. This text is often repeated on multiple pages because some of it remains in the form when the rest of the type is dumped out. We call this kind of text
Most early modern books will have running titles atop each page of textual content. Tag each running title using the
Most early modern books will also have signatures in the forme works at the bottom of the recto side of some leaves (usually the first three leaves in a gathering of four). Tag each signature using the B
. (For citation purposes, we would extrapolate the information B1r
if we were quoting text found on the recto side of that leaf.) In most instances, you will also want to include a
Most early modern books will also have catchwords in the forme works at the bottom of each book page. A catchword anticipates the first word of the following page. Tag each catchword using the
The printer of primary source may occasionally wrap the last word in a line onto the white space near the right-margin of the next line. For example, observe how the printer of Thomas Middleton’s
Enuy Learne now to ſcorne thy Inferiours, thoſe moſt loue(thee,And wiſh to eate their Hearts, that ſit aboue thee.
The wrapped word is not a forme work, so it requires a different encoding practice. To encode a relative to the element’s normal position, put the element 1em lower, and 2.5em to the left
. The previous Middleton passage should therefore be encoded in TEI-XML as follows:
Finally, you need to tag all dates, names, and toponyms.
In primary source transcriptions, we aim to conserve the original styling of the early modern printed book or manuscript being transcribed to the extent possible given Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and browser standards.
The presentation of margins in our diplomatic transcriptions of primary sources happen at three levels:
The properties defined in the
Throughout the document a range of margins are both possible and present, hence the need for lower orders of encoding. Margin creation at the page level is impractical because our document hierarchy is conceptual (chapters, sections, paragraphs etc.) rather than page-based, so there is no