You will want to think carefully about how to integrate local pointers (i.e., pointers to other parts of your own edition) into your prose. Your job is to make the pointers; LEMDOʼs job is to turn those pointers into citations that make sense for the publication medium. LEMDO editions are published as digital editions (where we cite by A.S.Sp. for primary dramatic texts and by paragraphs for critical paratexts) and as print editions (where we cite by the line numbers assigned to the printed text in the final stages of layout). You will need to think about whether you need to put your pointers in parentheses or integrate them into your prose. This documentation explains how our processing renders pointers and how you can use that information to determine how to integrate pointers into your prose.

Our processing turns your encoding into reader-friendly citations. There are two ways that this can happen in the digital edition:

In the print editions, our processing gives the act and scene number of the thing that you are citing as in the digital edition, but uses the line numbers that are assigned during page layout rather than speech numbers.

Pointers are very helpful for directing readers to the exact point that you want them to look at. They also ensure that our citations are consistently formatted across the LEMDO platform. Knowing how our processing renders pointers in the final output of your edition allows you to incorporate them naturally into your prose. You will extrapolate what will happen to the pointer when you are writing to be certain that it fits and makes sense in your text. So, if you are writing a sentence and want to talk about text in your play, you can add in a pointer to that text knowing that it will appear as an A.S.Sp. citation in the final output of your edition. Similarly, if you want to write about a section in a critical paratext, you can incorporate a pointer into the sentence knowing that it will appear as the heading of that section wrapped in quotation marks.

For example, you might want to write the following sentence:

In Act 1 Scene 3 of Honest Whore, Part 1, the Duke instructs servants to ‘uncurtain Infelice ʼ (Act 1 Scene 3 Speech 5).

Knowing how LEMDO renders pointers, you can use two pointers in that sentence: You will expect it to render on the LEMDO site as follows:

In A1 S3 of Honest Whore, Part 1, the Duke instructs servants to ‘uncurtain Infelice ʼ (A1 S3 Sp5).

Where A1 S3 and A1 S3 Sp5 are links to the modern text.

Similarly, you might want to link readers to a specific section in a critical paratext, as follows:

As I explain in the Ingestion and Egestion section of the General Introduction …

You can encode that sentence as: And expect it to render as:

As I explain in the Ingestion and Egestion section of the General Introduction …

Where Ingestion and Egestion and General Introduction are both links. The benefit of using <ptr> elements is that, if you choose to change the header of the <div> that you point to, your citations will automatically update to reflect that change.

Remember that you may use <ref> elements rather then pointers. With a <ref> element, you have complete control over what appears in the output. See Choose Linking Mechanisms for more information about the process of deciding whether to use a <ptr> or <ref> element and Encode Reference Links for information on encoding the <ref> element.

Example of an inline reference to two disparate points in the text: When we build the digital edition, the pointers and targets will be converted to A.S.Sp. references, each hyperlinked directly to the beginning and end points of this long passage. When we build the print edition, the pointer and targets will be converted to A.S.L numbers that correspond to the line numbers generated for the print edition. Thus, the digital edition will look like this:

The copy-text for this edition is Q1, apart from the passage at A1 S3 Sp26 to A2 S2 Sp45 where prior authority is given to Q0.

Example of an inline reference marking a point in the text: When we build the digital edition, the pointer will be converted to an A.S.Sp. reference that hyperlinks directly to this point in the text. It will render as follows:

… At S26 Sp2 Tonombey describes his father as being ‘lineally descended ʼ from Usumcasane …

Example of a parenthetical citation that spans two lines of text: When we build the digital edition, the pointers and targets will be converted to a single A.S.Sp. reference that links directly to the beginning of the quotation in the modern primary text. When we build the print edition, the pointers and targets will convert to a parenthetical citation indicating the line numbers of both the beginning and end points of the quotation, thus: (A.S.L-A.S.L).