Chapter 17. Annotations
Introduction to Annotations
This documentation chapter is for editors and encoders working on annotation files.
It will guide you through the tasks that you must complete while encoding the annotations
for your edition.
Rationale
Annotations are a form of critical paratext. Their purpose, length, and type will
depend on the scholarly objectives and intended readership of your anthology and as
well as the particular aims of your edition. In general, however, annotations serve
the following purposes:
Glosses and commentary annotations offer information necessary for the intended reader
to understand the text. For example, a student reader needs explanatory glosses of
difficult words and translations of non-English passages. An anthology aimed at scholars
will not need to provide such glosses.
Textual annotations work in tandem with the collation to offer more information about
textual variants and cruces. They offer justifications for the editor’s emendations.
Commentary notes point out intertextual connections, offer longer paraphrases than
a gloss can offer, and identify critically controversial or ambiguous passages, citing
other primary texts and secondary sources that will help the reader. The goal of such
annotations is not to display the editor’s erudition or lock down a single interpretation,
but rather to help the intended reader and support the scholarly objectives of the
edition within the anthology. They may constitute original scholarship in their own
right and may be cited by readers, critics, and future editors.
Collaborative Annotation
Annotations for an edition can be written synchronously by one or more editors, or
asynchronously by a later annotator. Annotations can bear a
@resp in order to give credit to multiple contributors.Anthology-Level Decisions
LEMDO supports various editorial approaches and ways of working. Consult with your
anthology lead to find out which types of annotations are required for your edition,
how verbose or terse your annotations should be, and how much you should be linking
to other texts and resources. In addition, anthologies can customize their interfaces
to set a default view and to allow users to turn annotations on and off by type.
Learning Outcomes
The annotations documentation is designed to support you through encoding all of the
annotations for your edition. By the time you have worked through this chapter, you
will:
Be familiar with the types of annotations that LEMDO supports.
Be able to write and encode your annotations according to LEMDO’s standard practices.
Know how to link your annotations to your modernized text.
Contents
| Section | Description |
Types of Annotations |
Learn about the types of notes that you may add to your annotation file |
Encode Annotations |
Learn how to encode your annotations |
Types of Annotations
Rationale
LEMDO uses the
<note>
element for a number of different types of notes, including notes that you write
for your edition’s annotations file. We require the
@type attribute on the
<note>
element so that we can apply the appropriate processing to each note. This not only
makes your encoding more specific and accurate, it allows us to render each type of
note according to project-wide and anthology decisions.This documentation will guide you through the process of choosing which value to put
on the
@type attribute on your annotations and it will provide useful information about how your
notes will render.Table of Types
@type Value |
Definition | Where They Appear |
| gloss | A short note that gives a brief description of the term | Online and print by default |
| commentary | Discussion of the meaning of the text, roughly equivalent to current annotation in editions like the Arden or New Cambridge; you may add multiple commentary notes in each annotation | Online and print by default; you may limit to either the online or print edition only
using the
@subType attribute |
| textual | Explains textual decisions made in the present and previous editions (often paired with a collation) | Online only |
| performance | Describes performance or production choices in specific productions named in the Production
database (see Production Database (PROD1)), cited in the Performance essay, and/or made in Performance-as-Research productions that were part of the editorial process |
To be determined by anthology; online and print (QME) |
| lexical | Discusses the etymology of a word/phrase and/or its meaning and prevalence in the early modern period; such notes will usually cite the OED and/or an early modern dictionary | Online only |
| lineation | Discusses the lineation or relineation of one or more lines in the text (often paired with a collation) | Online only |
Annotation Subtypes
By default, LEMDO includes all annotation types in the digital edition (the HTML pages).
By default, our LaTeX processing includes only gloss and commentary notes in the print
output. Some anthologies may also choose to include performance notes in their print
editions, as QME has done.
When you create a
Any annotation that does not have
<note>
with
@type=commentary, that note may be used in the web version of the play, and it may also appear in
the printed published version (if there is one). However, unlike the web version,
the print document cannot be infinitely long; annotations in the print version appear
as footnotes, and they must be constrained to a reasonable length. Since we want to
retain long annotations where we can, but we also want to provide an alternative where
necessary for the print version, you can also supply the
@subtype attribute with one of these values:
onlineOnly means that the annotation should only be rendered in the HTML version, because it’s
too long for the print version.
printOnly means that this is a shorter version of the annotation intended only for the print
edition; it should be ignored when building the web output.
@subtype will be used in both versions.Note that commentary notes longer than 225 characters are flagged by our LaTeX processing
as being too long for the LEMDO Hornbooks series.
Other Resources
LEMDO YouTube video: Annotations (Editorial)
Encode Annotations
Rationale
You will encode annotations in a stand-off file that points to anchors in your modern
text. If you are familiar with
TEI Guidelines,you will recognize this method as the
double end-point attachment method.1
Practice: Make the Annotation File
The annotations for the text you are annotating live in a separate file with the file
name of emdABBR_M_annotations.xml. Give the
@xml:id attribute on the root element a value of emdABBR_M_annotations. For example, the annotations for emdMV_M.xml are encoded in the emdMV_M_annotations.xml file. In a few cases, editors may choose to prepare multiple modern texts and annotate
each one separately. For example, James Mardock prepared a modern text based on the
folio text of the play. These files were named emdH5_FM.xml and emdH5_QM.xml. The linked annotation files are namedemdH5_FM_annotations.xml and emdH5_QM_annotations.xml. Note that the name of the annotations file always start with the name of the file
being annotated.The annotations file is saved in the app folder of your edition directory. If the app folder does not already contain an annotations file, you may create an annotations
file using the LEMDO template entitled
annotations_template.(See
Use LEMDO’s Oxygen Templates.) The instructions in the template are designed to supplement this documentation. Please read and follow the comments carefully. If you prefer, a member of the LEMDO team will create the file and add it to the repository for you.
The body of your annotations file will contain a single
<div>
element. Give this
<div>
a
@type attribute with a value of annotations.Place Anchors in the Source Document
An
<anchor>
is an empty (self-closing) element whose only purpose is to be pointed at from somewhere
else. It looks like this:
<anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1531"/>
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 it’s 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.<!-- ... -->
<l>Received the <anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1539"/>golden earnest of<anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1540"/> our death,</l>
<!-- ... -->
</lg>
Creating anchors manually is difficult because you can’t easily know what the next
available number for its
@xml:id will be. Therefore we use a keyboard 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 Ctrl+Shift+A (on Linux or Windows computers) or Cmd+Shift+A (on Mac 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 a unique value, as described above. You will need these anchor IDs when writing
your annotation in the annotation file.For richer documentation on anchors, see
Create Anchors.
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; that’s 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 anchorerror. You will therefore want to be strategic (and even creative) if you want to offer a commentary on a heading. Ask the LEMDO team for help.
Create Annotation and Point to Anchors
In the annotations file, all the notes on a single word or string are contained within
a parent
<note>
element with a
@type value of annotation. You also need two attributes on this parent
<note>
element that refer to the anchors placed in the source document. These attributes
are
@target and
@targetEnd.
@target points to the anchor to the left of the string you want to annotate.
@targetEnd points to the anchor to the right of the string you want to annotate.You will have to turn the
@xml:id attributes of the anchors into full pointers by specifying the target document. If
you have two anchor 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 prefix doc: plus the document ID plus the hash character, like this:
<!-- ... -->
<l>Received the <anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1539"/>golden earnest of<anchor xml:id="emdH5_FM_anc_1540"/> our death,</l>
<!-- ... -->
</lg>
<note type="annotation" target="doc:emdH5_FM#emdH5_FM_anc_1539" targetEnd="doc:emdH5_FM#emdH5_FM_anc_1540"/>
The value of
@target is must point to the left-hand anchor. The value of
@targetEnd must point to the right-hand anchor. Please be careful not to reverse the values
of your anchors.Add Notes
Inside the parent
<note>
element you will have at least two more note elements.The first child
<note>
element identifies the label, which is the string of text you want to annotate.2 Add a
@type attribute to the
<note>
, with a value label. The content of this note is the string to be annotated. If the string is long, you
may abbreviate it. Give at least the first and last word in the string, indicating
omitted material with the ellipsis character: … (not periods). See Practice: Insert an Ellipsis Character.
Following the
<note>
with the
@type value of label, you will have at least one sibling
<note>
element. This note will have a
@type attribute with the value gloss, commentary, textual, lexical, lineation, or performance. You may have one or more of such notes (i.e., a gloss and a commentary note; a commentary
note and a textual note; a gloss, a textual note, and a performance note; and so on),
but you may have only one of each type.Exception: you may create two versions of a gloss or commentary note, one for print
and one for online publication. To disambiguate the two versions, add the
@subtype attribute with the value printOnly or onlineOnly:
<note type="label">close</note>
<note type="gloss" subtype="printOnly">Private.</note>
<note type="gloss" subtype="onlineOnly">Private (<ref type="bibl" target="bibl:OEDT2">
<title level="m">OED</title>, 2nd ed. <term>close</term>, a.A.4.b</ref>).</note>
Note that textual, lexical, lineation, and performance are onlineOnly by default.<title level="m">OED</title>, 2nd ed. <term>close</term>, a.A.4.b</ref>).</note>
Encode Note Contents
Within the
<note>
element, you may use most of the elements, attributes, and values that are allowed
in critical paratexts. The full suite of LEMDO’s linking strategies is also available.
Think of your annotations as short critical paratexts and encode the content of your
notes as appropriate.
<note type="commentary" subtype="onlineOnly">The Scottish King David II, captured at
the battle of Neville’s Cross, 1346, while Edward III was in France. Historically,
and in Holinshed (<ref type="bibl" target="bibl:HOLI2">
<title level="m">Chronicles</title>, 1587</ref>), David II is not sent to France, though he is so in <title level="m">Edward III</title>.</note>
<title level="m">Chronicles</title>, 1587</ref>), David II is not sent to France, though he is so in <title level="m">Edward III</title>.</note>
Other Resources
LEMDO YouTube video: Collation (Technical): Linking
LEMDO YouTube video: Annotations (Editorial)
LEMDO YouTube video: Annotations (Technical)
Notes
2.You might hear this string called the
lemma.Strictly speaking, the term lemma is reserved for the collation.↑
Prosopography
Abby Flight
Remediator and encoder, 2024–present. Abby Flight completed her BA in English at the
University of Victoria in 2024, and is now an MA student focusing on Medieval and
Early Modern Studies.
Illya
Illya has a BA in English and Sociocultural Anthropology and an MA in English. Prior
to joining the HCMC, he was a PhD candidate in English and Book History at the University
of Toronto and worked on Records of Early English Drama and on the Modernist Archives Publishing Project. His work at the HCMC focuses on creating web-based applications for research projects
led by members of the faculty of Humanities at the University of Victoria. This involves
creating schemas for new and existing datasets, writing XSLT and build files to transform
datasets into structured TEI and HTML formats, implementing staticSearch, and ensuring
that new projects are Endings Principles compliant.
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 Beatrice 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.
Rylyn Christensen
Rylyn Christensen is an English major at the University of Victoria.
Samuel Seaberg
Samuel Seaberg, a University of Victoria English undergrad, enjoys riding his bike.
During the summer of 2025, he began working with LEMDO as a recipient of the Valerie
Kuehne Undergraduate Research Award (VKURA). Unfortunately, due to his summer being
spent primarily in working to establish an edition of Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2 and consequently working out how to represent multi-text works in a digital space,
his bike has suffered severely of sheltered seclusion from the sun. Note: Samuel now
works for LEMDO as the Assistant Project Manager, much to his bike’s chagrin.
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.
Bibliography
Holinshed, Raphael. Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and
Irelande. Vol. 3.
London, 1587. STC
13569. ESTC S122178.
OED: The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 1989.
Metadata
| Authority title | Chapter 17. Annotations |
| Type of text | Documentation |
| Publisher | Linked Early Modern Drama |
| Series | |
| Source | |
| Editorial declaration | |
| Edition | |
| Encoding description | |
| Document status | prgGenerated |
| License/availability |