LEMDO: Encode Figures

Encode Figures

Rationale

Figures in early modern playbooks include fleurons, ruled lines, and printer’s ornaments. Because LEMDO users will almost always have access to digital surrogates of the playbooks, we do not try to reproduce these figures. Instead, we use the


                                          <figure>

element to indicate where a figure occurs and provide some description of the figure.

Practice: Encode Figures

To encode a figure, add a


                                          <figure>

element where the figure appears in your text. Add a


                                       @type

attribute with a value from the drop-down list of allowed figure types. Do not add an


                                          <lb>

element before the


                                          <figure>

element. We do not count figures as lines in LEMDO. At rendering time, LEMDO will place each figure on its own line with padding before and after it.

We use a controlled vocabulary to ensure consistency in describing figures across the LEMDO platform. This makes figures searchable and navigable in our texts. LEMDO uses a subsection of the categories described by the Early Modern Dramatic Paratexts (EMDP) project. When you add the


                                       @type

attribute to a


                                          <figure>

element, Oxygen will give you a drop-down list of those allowed values:

Value	Description
`"addition"`	Something that was added after printing such as a library stamp.
`"asterism"`	Two or more asterisks (often used to separate sections).
`"device"`	A printer’s device is a woodcut or copper-plate block with a picture or design that served as the printer’s trademark, generally appearing on title pages or on the final leaf of a book (Erne). Previously printer’s ornament.
`"fleuron"`	A fleuron.
`"horizontal-rule"`	A horizontal line or rule.
`"illustration"`	Pictorial elucidation.
`"manicule"`	A pointing finger
`"ornament"`	A decoration used in conjunction with type.
`"portrait"`	Illustration of a person, real or historical, depicting the face, head, and shoulders.
`"virgule"`	A virgule.

Special Case: Encode Figure Descriptions

Some types of figures either require or are allowed to have a figure description, encoded using the


                                          <figDesc>

element.

Additions, illustrations, and portraits all require a figure description. Asterisms may have a figure description. Figure descriptions are prohibited for devices, fleurons, horizontal rules, manicules, ornaments, and virgules.

To encode the figure description, add a


                                          <figDesc>

element as a child of the


                                          <figure>

element. Type your figure description into the text node of


                                          <figDesc>

. Because there is not a visible image generated in the HTML rendering of the


                                          <figure>

element, we provide information similar to alt text in the


                                          <figDesc>

element for additions, illustrations, and portraits in semi-diplomatic transcriptions. For LEMDO’s practice for writing alt text, see Write Alternate Text for Images.

Special Case: Encode McKerrow Numbers for Devices

If you have identified the McKerrow number for a device in your copytext, you may capture that information using the

@n

attribute on the


                                          <figure>

element. For the value of the

@n

attribute, put "McKerrow" followed by a space and then the McKerrow citation number. For example:

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 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.

Kate LeBere

Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.

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	Encode Figures
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.