LEMDO: Encode Collation

Encode Collation

Prior Reading

This documentation assumes that you are familiar with the basics of collation and that you have made a witness list. See Introduction to Collation and Encode Witness List if you have not yet completed these steps.

Create a Single Apparatus Entry

Each apparatus entry has the following elements:

The


                                                <app>

element, which contains the entire apparatus entry for a single character, string, word, or phrase.

A child


                                                <lem>

element that gives the lemmatic reading.

One or more child


                                                <rdg>

elements that give the stemmatic readings.

Practice: Encode the Root `<app>` Element

Every lemmatic reading for which you want to record variants in the editorial history is rooted on the


                                             <app>

element. You will link to your modernized text from the


                                             <app>

element.

Before you can link to your lemmatic reading, it must have milestone


                                             <anchor>

elements on either side of it in your modernized text. Note that anchors do not wrap around text; they are simply milestones or waypoints in your primary text. See Create Anchors for instructions on how to add anchors in your modernized text.

Each anchor has a unique xml:id. To point to the anchor before the lemmatic reading (i.e., the start of the reading that you wish to collate), add the


                                          @from

attribute on the


                                             <app>

element with a value following this pattern: the prefix "doc:" followed by the xml:id of the file that you are linking to, a hash character, and the xml:id of the anchor before the lemmatic reading. To point to the anchor after the lemmatic reading (i.e., the end of the reading that you wish to collate), add the

@to

attribute on the


                                             <app>

element with a value following this pattern: the prefix "doc:" followed by the xml:id of the file that you are linking to, a hash character, and the xml:id of the anchor after the lemmatic reading. For example:

Note that it is standard practice to have both your modern file (i.e., to-be-modernized modern file) and your collation file open at the same time in your Oxygen window.

Practice: Capture the Lemmatic Reading

To capture your lemmatic reading, add a


                                             <lem>

element as a child of


                                             <app>

. Put the


                                          @source

attribute on


                                             <lem>

with the value of a hash character (#) followed by the xml:id of the source that you defined in your witness list (i.e., in the


                                             <witness>

element in your


                                             <listWit>

Type the lemmatic reading in the text node of the


                                             <lem>

element. Write it as you wish it to appear when it is rendered on screen or on the page. You can abbreviate the lemma if doing so will help the reader see differences between the lemmatic reading and stemmatic readings more clearly. This means that the text node of the


                                             <lem>

element does not have to match your lemmatic reading precisely, though it often will. Use an ellipsis character to abbreviate your lemma (not three spaced periods) as LEMDO looks for the ellipsis character at processing time.

Ellipses in Lemmas

You may shorten your lemma in the collation by typing an ellipsis character, exactly as you do with the label in an annotation. Because the anchors indicate the precise string being collated, the lemma (


                                             <lem>

) in your collation functions more like a label than a lemma. We never want three spaced periods to be used as ellipses, so you must use an ellipsis character ( … ) from the character map on your computer or from LEMDO’s pre-mapped characters. See Practice: Insert an Ellipsis Character.

Practice: Capture the Stemmatic Readings

Add a


                                             <rdg>

element as a child of


                                             <app>

for each stemmatic reading that you wish to capture. Indicate the witness for each reading by using the


                                          @wit

attribute on


                                             <rdg>

with the value of a hash character (#) followed by the xml:id of the witness that you defined in your witness list (


                                             <listWit>

Type the relevant part of the reading precisely. Do not abbreviate or shorten readings if doing so would lose important information about the publication and editorial history of the text. If you do wish to shorten readings by omitting material from the middle of the reading, use the


                                             <gap>

element, the


                                          @reason

attribute, and the "sampling" value to indicate that the omission is yours. (It will be rendered as an ellipsis wrapped in square brackets.)

If there is an ellipsis in the witness, type an ellipsis character and wrap it in the


                                             <pc>

element. See Practice: Insert an Ellipsis Character.

Encode Omissions

If you want to indicate that a witness omits the entire string that is captured in your lemma, create an empty


                                          <rdg>

element:

<app from="doc:emdFV_M#emdFV_M_anc_23" to="doc:emdFV_M#emdFV_M_anc_24">
  <lem source="#emdFV_M_collation_thisEd">
    <supplied>Sir John Oldcastle</supplied>
  </lem>
  <rdg wit="#emdFV_M_collation_Q1"/>
</app>

See TEI Guidelines 13.4.: An editor wishing to signal an omission in one witness should encode the omission using an empty rdg.

At processing time, LEMDO will supply the phrase (Omitted) (without the quotation marks).

Special Case: Collate Substantive Adoption from Copy-Text

If you are following your copy-text in substance, you might sometimes feel that it would be misleading not to record the differences between your modernized version of the copy-text and the precise text of your copy-text. In such cases, you can attribute your lemma and the copy-text reading to the same source/witness. In the example below, the editor of Henry V, who takes F1¹ as the copy-text, has decided to follow F1 more closely than other editors have done. The editor retains F1’s comma between “high” and uprearèd thereby claiming that high, uprearèd, and abutting fronts offers a list of three modifying adjectives. But the editor’s removal of F1’s hyphen—an emendation of an accidental that we would not normally collate—means that the reader might not understand why Pope, Johnson, and Steevens have a hyphen. In such cases, you will want to give credit to the source of your reading in the


                                          <lem>

element and include the exact text of the witness in a


                                          <rdg>

element. Note that the


                                          <rdg>

is a precise transcription and retains the “v”:

<app from="doc:emdH5_FM#emdH5_FM_anc_60" to="doc:emdH5_FM#emdH5_FM_anc_61">
  <lem source="#emdH5_FM_collation_F1">high, uprearèd</lem>
  <rdg wit="#emdH5_FM_collation_F1">high, vp-reared</rdg>
  <rdg wit="#emdH5_FM_collation_Pope">high up-reared</rdg>
  <rdg wit="#emdH5_FM_collation_Johnson">high-up-reared</rdg>
  <rdg wit="#emdH5_FM_collation_Steevens">high-upreared</rdg>
</app>

Special Case: Collate Substantive Adoption from Another Early Text

Examples

Example of a basic entry:

<app from="doc:emd1HW_M#emd1HW_M_anc_31" to="doc:emd1HW_M#emd1HW_M_anc_32">
  <lem source="#emd1HW_M_collation_Ed">Gentlemen</lem>
  <rdg wit="#emd1HW_M_collation_Q2S">All</rdg>
  <rdg wit="#emd1HW_M_collation_Q1">All</rdg>
</app>

Example of a lemmatic reading that has been truncated using an ellipsis:

<app from="doc:emdH5_FM#emdH5_FM_anc_6127" to="doc:emdH5_FM#emdH5_FM_anc_6128">
<lem source="#emdH5_FM_collation_F1">O braggart … exhale.<note>verse in F1</note>
</lem>
</app>

Example of truncated lemmatic and stemmatic readings:

<app from="doc:emdH5_FM#emdH5_FM_anc_6138" to="doc:emdH5_FM#emdH5_FM_anc_6139">
  <lem source="#emdH5_FM_collation_Pope">We’ll give … bring them.<note>one line</note>
  </lem>
  <rdg wit="#emdH5_FM_collation_F1">Weele giue <gap reason="sampling"/> audience. / Goe, and bring them.</rdg>
</app>

Example of an entry where ellipses are not advisable:

<app from="doc:emd1HW_M#emd1HW_M_anc_135" to="doc:emd1HW_M#emd1HW_M_anc_137">
  <lem source="#emd1HW_M_collation_Dodsley_1">O yes, my lord, so soon.</lem>
  <rdg wit="#emd1HW_M_collation_Dodsley_1">O! yes, my lord, so soon.</rdg>
  <rdg wit="#emd1HW_M_collation_Q1 #emd1HW_M_collation_Q2S">O yes my Lord, so soone:</rdg>
  <rdg wit="#emd1HW_M_collation_Dyce">O yes, my lord. So soon?</rdg>
  <note>Punctuated substantially as in Dodsley 1.</note>
</app>

Other Resources

LEMDO YouTube video: Collation (Technical): Linking

Notes

1.Note that F and F1 are equally acceptable as sigla. This editor opts for F1 because he collates all four folios plus the fragmentary F5.↑

Prosopography

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.

Nicole Vatcher

Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.) in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was women’s writing in the modernist period.

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.

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 Collation
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.