LEMDO: Semi-Diplomatic Principles, Requirements, and Prohibitions

Semi-Diplomatic Principles, Requirements, and Prohibitions

Principles

LEMDO semi-diplomatic transcriptions are transcribed and encoded truthfully to facilitate a specific set of objectives. They are designed to:

Give editors a starting point for their modernized editions.

Capture bibliographic information about a playbook that is not included in the modernized edition.

Provide a readable and searchable text for occasional undergraduate classroom work on textual questions (e.g., comparing a modernized edition to the early text or texts).

Provide an accessible reference to scholars looking for original and alternate readings of a text.

Enumerate running speech numbers for citational purposes.

Enumerate compositorial lines (witness line numbers) for citational purposes.

Tag certain features for future harvesting and processing, including stage directions, speeches, and speakers.

Allow for potential linking to a modernized copytext edition.

LEMDO’s semi-diplomatic transcriptions are not meant to help with:

Advanced bibliographical analyses.

Typographical questions.

Physical bibliographical questions.

If you are interested in such analyses and questions, you will want to consult our high-resolution facsimile images (keeping in mind that we usually have images of just one copy from one library) and/or visit libraries to work with extant playbooks in person.

Requirements

LEMDO semi-diplomatic transcriptions are required to do the following:

Capture all page beginnings using the milestone


                                                <pb>

element.

Transcribe the content of the title page using the full suite of elements allowed as children of the


                                                <titlePage>

element.

Retain capitalization and all punctuation.

Regularize long s.

Modernize space between words.

Retain u/v as composited.

Wrap speeches in the


                                                <sp>

element with a child


                                                <ab>

element.

Wrap speech prefixes in the


                                                <speaker>

element.

Wrap stage directions in the


                                                <stage>

element, indicate stage direction type(s) using the


                                             @type

attribute and LEMDO’s controlled vocabulary of stage direction types, and indicate the placement of the stage direction on the printed page using the


                                             @place

attribute and LEMDO’s controlled vocabulary for indicating placement.

Indicate the beginning of compositorial lines with the milestone


                                                <lb>

element.

Capture headings (e.g., acts and scenes) where they are present in the source using the


                                                <label>

element. (Note that LEMDO does not wrap acts and scenes in


                                                <div>

elements in semi-diplomatic transcriptions, largely because literary divisions are not consistently present in early playbooks.)

Capture ruled lines and printer’s ornaments using the


                                                <figure>

element.

Transcribe and tag forme works (signature marks, catchwords, running titles) with the


                                                <fw>

element, the


                                             @type

attribute, and the correct value from LEMDO’s controlled vocabulary for forme work types.

Capture italicization through our global SCSS file for semi-diplomatic transcriptions, the


                                                <tagsDecl>

element, or


                                             @style

attributes and inline CSS.

Indicate vertical white space and semantically significant horizontal white space with the


                                                <space>

element.

Transcribe accented letters and digraphs (e.g., é, æ).

Tag abbreviations with the


                                                <abbr>

element and provided an expanded form tagged with


                                                <expan>

Prohibitions

Semi-diplomatic transcriptions are not the place to:

Add editorial character lists (character lists are transcribed if they are part of the early publication).

Indicate the mode of the language (prose or verse).

Assign or reassign speeches.

Regularize speech prefixes.

Expand digraphs (e.g., æ).

Encode strings of text in a foreign language. (Use the


                                                <hi>

element plus the


                                             @rendition

to capture any typographic features of foreign text. Normally, compositors use italic type for foreign words if the rest of the text is in roman.)

Prosopography

Isabella Seales

Isabella Seales is a fourth year undergraduate completing her Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Victoria. She has a special interest in Renaissance and Metaphysical Literature. She is assisting Dr. Jenstad with the MoEML Mayoral Shows anthology as part of the Undergraduate Student Research Award program.

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.

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	Semi-Diplomatic Principles, Requirements, and Prohibitions
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.