Default Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions

LEMDO has developed a default stylesheet by looking at many playbooks, consulting Claire M. L. Bourne’s Typographies of Performance in Early Modern England , and using the measurements she generously shared with us. This stylesheet is applied to all documents with the categories "ldtPrimaryText" and "letSemiDiplomatic" .

Rationale

Printed playbooks are composited and laid out similarly on the printed page. Our default stylesheet captures most key features of this composition and allows for a nice on-screen approximation of an early modern book. In conjunction with our recommended, pre-written file-wide styling, it is sufficient for playbooks that are similar in composition and mise-en-page to most other playbooks, but can also be used in conjunction with more granular styling.

Principles

As with all of our encoding, we follow the Endings principles. For styling in semi-diplomatic transcriptions, we must keep the following principles in mind:
Massive redundancy: every page contains all the components it needs, so that it will function without the rest of the site if necessary, even though doing so means duplicating information across the site. (Endings Project, Principles 4.6)
Graceful failure: every page should still function effectively even in the absence of JavaScript or CSS support. (Endings Project, Principles 4.7)
For our semi-diplomatic transcriptions, this means that:
Each file must be able to exist on its own and contain all necessary information
No key information about what our sourcebook looks like should be captured in our SCSS file (default styling) alone.
We use TEI to describe and CSS to prescribe; if something is not described in the TEI file, itʼs style should not be prescribed in the SCSS file.

Practice: Use Default Style

LEMDOʼs default stylesheet will be applied to your semi-diplomatic transcription at rendering time. If it accurately captures the composition and mise-en-page of your playbook or your anthology is not interested in capturing mise-en-page, you do not need to worry about adding any additional CSS other than the recommended, pre-written <tagsDecl> . Our default stylesheet will make your text readable, usable, and approximately bibliographically similar to the original. For our recommened, pre-written <tagsDecl> , see Practice: Add LEMDOʼs Recommended File-Wide Style.
If the HTML output does not look right, check your encoding. For example, if a line is not beginning where it should, check that you have put the <lb> element in the correct place.
If your playbook has deviations from most other playbooks and your anthology is interested in capturing mise-en-page, this default styling will still apply to your semi-diplomatic transcription at rendering time. You can add additional CSS to capture any deviations. See Encode File-Wide Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions and Encode Inline Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions.

Table of Default Renditions

Playbook Feature Element Styling
Title Page <titlePage> Renders centred.
Speech Prefixes <speaker> Renders italic, indented, and on the same line as the following speech with one space between the speech prefix and following speech.
Speech <ab> as a child of <sp> On the same line as the preceding speech prefix.
Line Break <lb> Creates a new line. No new lines will render without an <lb> element.
Page Beginning <pb> Renders as a solid horizontal line with one line of padding on either side.
Column Beginning <cb> Renders as a dotted horizontal line with one line of padding on either side.
Figures <figure> Renders centred.
Headings and Other Labels <label> Renders centred.
Running Titles <fw type="runningTitle"> Must be styled using file-wide styling. See Practice: Add LEMDOʼs Recommended File-Wide Style.
Signature Marks <fw type="sig"> Must be styled using file-wide styling. See Practice: Add LEMDOʼs Recommended File-Wide Style.
Catchwords <fw type="catch"> Must be styled using file-wide styling. See Practice: Add LEMDOʼs Recommended File-Wide Style.
Horizontal White Space <space dim="horizontal" unit="char" quantity="n"> Renders with horizontal space equal to the number of ems in the @quantity attribute.
Vertical White Space <space dim="vertical" unit="line" quantity="n"> Renders with vertical space equal to the number of lines in the @quantity attribute.
All Stage Directions <stage> Renders italic.
Marginal Stage Directions <stage place="plc-right-margin"> and <stage place="plc-left-margin"> Renders in the right margin.
Hungwords: Turnover <seg type="turnover"> Must be styled using inline styling. See Encode Inline Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions.
Hungwords: Turnunder <seg type="turnunder"> Must be styled using inline styling. See Encode Inline Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions.
Abbreviations <abbr> and <expan> as children of <choice> Renders the text node of <abbr> with mouseover displaying Expansion: text node of <expan> .
Minor compositorial errors <sic> and <corr> as children of <choice> Renders the text node of <sic> with mouseover displaying the text node of <corr> .
Name of author <signed> Must be styled using file-wide styling. See Practice: Add LEMDOʼs Recommended File-Wide Style.
Trailers <trailer> Renders centred.

Table of Default Styling for the @place Attribute

Placement @place Value Styling
Right "plc-right" Renders aligned right.
Right Margin "plc-right-margin" Renders in the right margin.
Right Inline "plc-right" Renders aligned right.
Right Adjacent "plc-right-adjacent" Renders aligned right beside other text.
Right Top "plc-right" Renders aligned right.
Right Bottom "plc-right" Renders aligned right.
Right "plc-right" Renders aligned right.
Left "plc-left" Renders aligned left.
Left Margin "plc-left-margin" Renders in the right margin.
Left Inline "plc-left-inline" Renders aligned left.
Left Top "plc-left-top" Renders aligned left.
Left Bottom "plc-left-bottom" Renders aligned left.
Centre "plc-centre" Renders centred.
Centre Top "plc-centre-top" Renders centred.
Centre Bottom "plc-centre-bottom" Renders centred.
Bottom "plc-bottom" No default styling.
Top "plc-top" No default styling.

Special Case: Renditions for Marginal Stage Directions

Stage directions tagged as being in the margin will render in the right margin regardless of whether the @place attribute on <stage> has the value "plc-right-margin" or "plc-left-margin".
LEMDO is not interested in replicating the exact mise-en-page of early modern books. We provide facsimiles for those who are interested in the exact layout of source playbooks. Additionally, the online environment is fundamentally different from early modern printed books—we do not have the same need as early modern compositors to change which side marginal stage directions appear on based on whether a page is recto or verso as we do not have recto and verso pages.
You will still truthfully capture which side of the page marginal stage directions appear on using the value of the @place attribute. For more information on capturing the placement of stage directions in semi-diplomatic transcriptions, see Practice: Encode Placement.

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.

Rowan Grayson

Rowan is a BA and MA student in English and Latin American Studies at UNC Charlotte working on his masterʼs thesis, a comparative study of the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race in Brazilian and Dominican science fiction novels. He is currently a Mitacs Research Intern with LEMDO at UVic.

Rylyn Christensen

Rylyn Christensen is an English major at the University of Victoria.

Sofia Spiteri

Sofia Spiteri is currently completing her Bachelor of Arts in History at the University of Victoria. During the summer of 2023, she had the opportunity to work with LEMDO as a recipient of the Valerie Kuehne Undergraduate Research Award (VKURA). Her work with LEMDO primarily includes semi-diplomatic transcriptions for The Winterʼs Tale and Mucedorus.

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