Encode Deletions and Insertions

Prior Reading

When encoding insertions, you can encode the placement of the insertion using the taxonomy (overwritten, left above, etc). You can also encode the hand, if known, of the insertion.

Insertions

Encode manuscript additions using the <add> tag: that is, anything that seems to have been inserted in the text after it was originally written: this could be something that the original scribe changed or added after or it could be a later hand.
The following example shows the original manuscript compiler adding a word above the line:
<ab>
  <lb/>May we with right <add place="plc-above">and</add> conscience make this claim?</ab>
Sometimes, when adding an insertion or completing a line that is too long for the page, a manuscript compiler inserts a caret or an arrow to indicate where the insertion goes. You can indicate an upward pointing caret (^) using the "g_caret" glyph (see Keyboard Shortcuts and Special Characters.
The following example shows a caret added below the line to point to text added above the line (in this case, added by a second hand):
<add place="plc-below" hand="DOUH2">^</add>
<add place="plc-above" hand="DOUH2">once more</add>
The following example shows a caret added above the line next to a textual addition by a second hand:
<add place="plc-above" hand="DOUH2">^heard</add>
Additions can be as short as a single letter:
<ab>
  <lb/>May we with right and conscience make this claim<add hand="DOUH2">e</add>?</ab>
As the Placement Taxonomy notes, for manuscript encoding, use your judgment about the placement of an addition and what constitutes, for instance, the margin of a page.
For deletions, you can indicate that the text deleted is illegible:
<ab>
  <lb/>When shall we <del>
  <gap reason="illegible"/>
</del> three meet again?</ab>
Gap is only used to encode material that has not been transcribed.
If, however, you can read the deleted text, type the text that has been erased, struck through, or otherwise deleted:
<ab>
  <lb/>When shall we <del rend="strikethrough">three</del> three meet again?</ab>
Note that in the above example, the original scribe has struck out a repeated word.
You can use <unclear> to indicate a stretch of text that is partially legible:
<ab>
  <lb/>When shall we <del rend="strikethrough">
  <unclear>three</unclear>
</del> three meet again?</ab>
In the above example, the transcriber is guessing that the struck out word is three.
Some reasons for using <unclear> include deletions and illegible writing.

Additions paired with insertions

Sometimes a deletion will be paired with an insertion. In TEI, these are nested in a <subst> element:
<ab>O sonne, amongst so <subst>
  <del rend="overwrite">few</del>
  <add hand="JOC2">many</add>
</subst> miseries</ab>
The above example shows a second hand writing over a word in the original manuscript.
As with all other additions, you can indicate the hand if it is not the hand of the main scribe; you can also indicate the place of the addition.
<ab>O sonne, amongst so <subst>
  <del rend="strikethrough">few</del>
  <add hand="JOC2" place="plc-right-margin">many</add>
</subst> miseries</ab>.

Additions contained by superscripted material

If material is superscripted inside added material (i.e., superscripted with respect to other letters in the added material), then encode like this (using the case you mentioned of banning and ^ye bitter curse): the encoding would be:
<add place="plc-above">y<hi rendition="rnd:superscript">e</hi>
</add>
This encoding allows us to capture the fact that the e is superscripted in the added material, relative to the y.

Prosopography

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Laura Estill

Laura Estill is a Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities and Associate Professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she directs the digital humanities centre. Her monograph (Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays, 2015) and co-edited collections (Early Modern Studies after the Digital Turn, 2016 and Early British Drama in Manuscript, 2019) explore the reception history of drama by Shakespeare and his contemporaries from their initial circulation in print, manuscript, and on stage to how we mediate and understand these texts and performances online today. Her work has appeared in journals including Shakespeare Quarterly, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Humanities, and The Seventeenth Century, as well as in collections such as Shakespeare’s Theatrical Documents, Shakespeare and Textual Studies, and The Shakespeare User. She is co-editor of Early Modern Digital Review.

Mahayla Galliford

Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Metadata

Authority title Encode Deletions and Insertions
Type of text Documentation
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Linked Early Modern Drama Online
Source
TEI Customization created by Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Janelle Jenstad; documentation written by members of the LEMDO Team
Editorial declaration n/a
Edition Released with Linked Early Modern Drama Online 1.0
Encoding description Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status prgGenerated
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
License/availability
This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the editor and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the documentation in the classroom.