Lineation in Modern Texts

Rationale

The modern text does not aim to preserve the layout of text on the page: prose passages may wrap to fit a user’s screen and stage directions can be contained on a single line. The editors task in the modern text is, rather, to encode sections of text with the <lg> (line group) element, <l> (line) element, and <p> (paragraph) element.

Practice

The basics of lineation are as follows:
Each verse line in a speech is wrapped in <l>
Each prose speech is wrapped in <p> .
Passages of verse lines that constitute a song, sonnet, or other literary form that is more than just blank verse or sporadically rhymed verse are additionally wrapped in a parent <lg> element that contains all the <l> elements and their content. Do not use <lg> to wrap verse speeches unless the lines therein comprise a song, sonnet, or some other literary form that you want to identify as more than just verse lines.

Line Groups

LEMDO allows various types of linegroups:
@type = "sonnet"
@type = "quatrain"
@type = "verseLetter"
@type = "song"
You have the option to wrap rhyming couplets or triplets in the <lg> element, using the @type attribute and the values "couplet" or "triplet". Consult with your Anthology Lead about whether or not your anthology is tagging couplets and triplets. You will also want to be aware of rhymes in early modern English pronunciation. See Appendix I in David Crystalʼs Pronouncing Shakespeare.
<lg type="couplet">
  <l>Never was a tale of more woe</l>
  <l>Than that of Juliet and her Romeo.</l>
</lg>
These <lg> can be nested. You may tag an entire sonnet with a <lg> and then tag the quatrains and couplet within the sonnet with child <lg> elements.
We have additional documentation on Encode Letters and Songs in Modern Texts.

Shared Verse Lines

Verse lines usually have ten beats in iambic pentameter. Some have an eleventh unstressed syllable (a feminine ending which has nothing to do with modern gender).
If a single line of verse is spoken by two or more speakers, we consider it a shared verse line.
Use the @part attribute on <l> element to indicate the Initial, Medial, and Final part of a shared line. These values are indicated by capital letters: "I", "M", and "F".
For example, see this exchange in Henry V:
<sp>
  <speaker>Exeter</speaker>
  <l part="I">Not here in presence.</l>
</sp> <sp>
  <speaker>King Henry</speaker>
  <l part="F">Send for him, good uncle.</l>
</sp>
Note that LEMDO does not indent shared verse lines in the HTML or print outputs. Your tagging facilitates text analysis and may facilitate indented rendering in other publishing environments if your texts are repurposed.

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.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVicʼs 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

Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.

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

Crystal, David. Pronouncing Shakespeare: The Globe Experiment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. WSB aaq125.

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