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 machines) or Command+Shift+A (on iOS machines). This shortcut will automatically generate an element <anchor> to the left of your selection, and another to the right. Each <anchor> has a generated @xml:id with the following value: “doc:” followed by the ID of the text you are encoding, followed by a “#” followed by _anc_followed by the appropriate anchor number. You will need these anchor IDs when writing your annotation in the annotation file, as described below.

For richer documentation on anchors, see Create Anchors.

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 attributes are @target and @targetEnd. @target refers to the left anchor on the annotated string, and @targetEnd refers to the right anchor on the annotated string. Copy the value of the @xml:id of the respective anchor (in the source document) into the appropriate target. The next element is a <note> that identifies the label, which is the string of text you want to annotate. Add an attribute @type to the <note> , with a value label. The content of this note is the literal string to be annotated. Following 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 from the source file (text document):