Introduction to Modernized Texts

The documentation in this chapter is for encoders and editors encoding their modernized texts.

Learning Outcomes

By the time you have worked through every section of this chapter, you will:
Know how to encode the structure of your modernized texts using elements for acts, scenes, speeches, stage directions, and lines.
Be able to create your character list with notes on characters.
Understand how your encoding is used by LEMDO’s processing to create your edition’s table of contents and to create links to discrete units in your modernized texts.
Know how to encode verse, including verse letters and songs.
Be familiar with LEMDO’s list of values allowed on the @type attribute on stage directions.
Understand how LEMDO will render your stage directions.

Modernization Workflow

The LEMDO team will provide you with an XML template for your modernized text once your semi-diplomatic transcription is completed.1 This template will use the text of your semi-diplomatic transcription, but replace the encoding with the basic TEI tagging for modernized texts. In cases where there is more than one possible copy-text and therefore more than one semi-diplomatic transcription, consult with your anthology lead about the appropriate starting point for your modernized text. If you choose to do copy-text editions of multiple early texts, we will provide you with all the templates you need, within reason.
The modernized text is where you will add your editorial act and scene divisions, distinguish prose from verse, add editorial stage directions, and assign speeches to speakers. Your character list is embedded in the <teiHeader> of the modernized text file.
Your collation and annotations are pinned to this file. You will want to prepare your collation before you emend the text.2 You will likely create annotations as you modernize and/or after you have finished tagging prose, verse, and literary divisions.
Once you have completed your collation, you will make any emendations (recording in your collation file all substantive changes that are unique to you or attributable to earlier editors). You will usually want to make any relineations while you emend. Then you modernize the spelling and punctuation of the text; during the process of modernization, you may discover additional words/phrases that you wish to collate.
The purpose of tagging in the modernized text is to encode editorial decisions. While many of the TEI tags will be in place, you should confirm LEMDO’s markup to make sure it communicates your intention, both in its final rendering for human readers and in precision for machine-aided analysis.

Contents

Section Description
Lineation in Modernized Texts Learn about how to encode lineation in your modernized text, including how to distinguish between verse and prose speeches
Encode Character Lists in Modernized Texts Learn how to encode your character list
Encode Speakers in Modernized Texts Learn about LEMDO’s rules and practice for encoding speakers
Literary Divisions in Modernized Texts: Acts, Scenes, and Speeches Learn about countable literary divisions in LEMDO’s modernized texts
Number Acts and Scenes Learn how to number acts and scenes in your modernized text
Number Speeches Learn how to number speeches in your modernized text
Number Prologues, Epilogues, and Intra-Texts Learn about encoding text that is outside of the acts in your modernized text such as prologues and choruses
Encode Letters and Songs in Modernized Texts Learn how to encode letters and songs in your modernized text
Encode Stage Directions in Modernized Texts Learn how to encode stage directions in your modernized text, including encoding supplied stage directions
Identify Stage Direction Types Learn when to use which value for different types of stage directions
Number Stage Directions Learn how to give a unique @xml:id to each stage direction, for linking and citation purposes
Stage Direction Rendering in Modernized Texts Learn about how LEMDO renders stage directions and how your encoding impacts the ultimate appearance of your stage directions
Appendix: Countable Units Learn about the basic patterns of countable units in modernized texts

Notes

1.In many cases, LEMDO will have prepared a semi-diplomatic transcription for you, and your job will be to proofread it carefully.
2.The normal workflow is: collation, then emendation, then modernization.

Prosopography

Isabella Seales

Isabella Seales is a fourth year undergraduate completing her Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Victoria. She has a special interest in Renaissance and Metaphysical Literature. She is assisting Dr. Jenstad with the MoEML Mayoral Shows anthology as part of the Undergraduate Student Research Award program.

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.

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.

Sam 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.

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