LEMDO: Write Annotations

Write Annotations

The annotations for the text you are annotating live in a separate file with an attribute


                                    @xml:id

: "textId_annotation.xml". The annotation file is saved in the app folder of your play portfolio. If the app folder does not already contain that file, create an annotations file using the LEMDO template entitled annotations_template. (See Use LEMDOʼs Oxygen Templates.)

¶ Placing Anchors in the Source Document


                                          <anchor>

is an empty (self-closing) element whose only purpose is to be pointed at from somewhere else. It looks like this:

It has an


                                       @xml:id

attribute which starts with the id of the text containing it (here emdH5_FM), and then has _anc_ (= this is an anchor) and a number. The number has no significance except to ensure that every anchor in a document has a unique


                                       @xml:id

attribute. Numbers do not go in sequence through the document; they are assigned in the order that anchors are added, and are created automatically (see below).

A single anchor marks a specific point in the text. However, for annotation you normally need to mark a range of text, with a starting point and a finishing point. This is done simply by using two anchors:

<lg>


<l>Received the <anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1539"/>golden earnest of<anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1540"/> our death,</l>

</lg>

These two anchors delimit the phrase “golden earnest of”, and an annotation can use them to specify that itʼs talking about that specific phrase. Since anchors are self-closing elements, they can appear anywhere in the text, and therefore you can annotate a span of text which crosses the normal XML hierarchy if you need to. For example, you can annotate a phrase that begins in the middle of one line and ends in the middle of another.

Creating anchors manually is difficult because you canʼt easily know what the next available number for its


                                       @xml:id

will be. Therefore we use an Oxygen shortcut to insert them automatically. To insert anchors in the document you are annotating, identify the string you want to annotate, and select it with your cursor. Once the selection is made, press Control+Shift+A (on Linux or Windows computers) or Command+Shift+A (on OSX computers). This shortcut will automatically generate an


                                          <anchor>

to the left of your selection, and another to the right. Each


                                          <anchor>

has a generated attribute


                                       @xml:id

with the a unique value, as described above. You will need these anchor IDs when writing your annotation in the annotation file.

¶ Things to Avoid

When you insert anchors into the text, bear in mind that they are turned into footnote numbers in the print output. That means you should not place a single anchor or a final anchor anywhere that footnote numbers would be inappropriate or distracting. For example, if you were to place an anchor at the beginning of a


                                             <head>

element and point to it as a single locus, the result would be the appearance of a footnote number right at the beginning of a heading on the page; thatʼs distracting and problematic from the point of view of font sizing. LEMDO therefore drops anchors in such locations when we build the PDF, which may result in a missing anchor error. You will therefore want to be strategic (and even creative) if you want to offer a commentary on a heading.

¶ Writing Annotations in the Corresponding Annotation File

In the annotation file, the struture of every annotation is as follows:


                                          <note>

: the parent element that will contain all elements and content of the current annotation you are writing. Give this element an attribute


                                       @type

with a value of annotation. You also need two attributes that refer to the anchors placed in the source document. These are


                                       @target

and


                                       @targetEnd


                                       @target

will point to the left anchor on the annotated string, and


                                       @targetEnd

will point at the right anchor.

You will have to turn the


                                       @xml:id

attributes of the anchors into full pointers by specifying the target document; so when you have two anchors that look like this:

<lg>


<l>Received the <anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1539"/>golden earnest of<anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1540"/> our death,</l>

</lg>

you will need to point to them by prepending the doc:[docId] followed by a hash, like this:

The next element required in your annotation is a child


                                          <note>

that identifies the label, which is the string of text you want to annotate (normally referred to as the lemma). Add an attribute


                                       @type


                                          <note>

, with a value "label". The content of this note is the literal string to be annotated (which, if itʼs longer than three or four words, should be abbreviated using an ellipsis). Following this are the actual


                                          <note>

s. Assign an attribute


                                       @type

with a value of gloss or commentary. Gloss corresponds to the short form and commentary to the fuller version of your note. Encode the content of the notes as appropriate. Below is an example.

Note from the annotation file:

<note type="annotation" target="doc:emdFBFB_M#emdFBFB_M_anc_11" targetEnd="doc:emdFBFB_M#emdFBFB_M_anc_12">
  <note type="label">Lacy, earl of Lincoln</note>
  <note type="gloss">a pseudo-historical character probably inspired by Edmund de Lacy (d. 1258), a courtier and heir of John de Lacy, second earl of Lincoln (d. 1240)</note>
  <note type="commentary">Holinshed states that both "William earle Warren and John earle of Lincoln" died in 1240 (<hi rendition="rnd:italic">Chronicle</hi> 225). The chronicler’s pairing of these magnates may have inspired Greene to include their heirs as members of Edward’s entourage (Round 20). Greene seems unaware of the fact that the younger Lacy died before he could inherit the earldom of Lincoln, which (<hi rendition="rnd:italic">suo jure</hi>) remained invested in his mother the countess Margaret de Lacy (Wilkinson 121-22).</note>
</note>

This is what the note is pointing at, in the original source document:

<p>

with <anchor xml:id="emdFBFB_M_anc_11"/>Lacy, earl of <lb type="tln" n="2"/>Lincoln<anchor xml:id="emdFBFB_M_anc_12"/>

</p>

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.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVicʼs 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

Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.

Rylyn Christensen

Rylyn Christensen is an English major at the University of Victoria.

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	Write Annotations
Type of text	Documentation
Short title
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.