Chapter 11. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Print Playbooks
This chapter of our documentation is still in beta. We welcome feedback, corrections,
and questions while we finalize the page in our 2024–2025 work cycle.
Introduction to Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions (Print)
The information in this chapter is specifically for those who are working on semi-diplomatic
transcriptions of printed playbooks. It is meant to accompany the documentation available
in Chapter 10. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions, which provides background information on LEMDO’s practice for semi-diplomatic transcriptions
along with practice that is shared across both printed and manuscript playbooks. We
recommend that you familiarize yourself with both chapters.
Learning Outcomes
By the time you have worked through this chapter, you will:
Know how to encode the categories for your semi-diplomatic transcription.
Be able to encode features unique to printed playbooks such as forme works, hungwords,
and press variants.
LEMDO processes different types of documents in different ways. The processor looks
for the
<catRef>
elements inside the
<textClass>
element in the
<teiHeader>
of your document and then applies the appropriate processing for the document types
that are captured in the
<catRef>
elements. If you document does not have
<catRef>
elements, our processor will not know what type of file it is. If your document has
the wrong values in the
@target attribute of the
<catRef>
elements, our processor will apply the wrong processing to your file.
LEMDO has special processing for semi-diplomatic transcriptions (i.e, semi-diplomatic
transcriptions), so it is particularly important to get the
<catRef>
s right for these types of documents.
One indicates the general document type, using the value ldtPrimaryText from the LEMDO Document Type Taxonomy. (See Document Type Taxonomy.)
One indicates the format of the printed book, using a value from the LEMDO Book Formats
Taxonomy: lbfQuarto, lbfFolio, lbfBroadside, or lbfOctavo. (See Print Book Formats Taxonomy.) Note that transcriptions of manuscript playbooks will have the value lbfManuscript.
One indicates the editorial treatment, using the value letSemiDiplomatic from the LEMDO Editorial Treatments Taxonomy. (See Editorial Treatments Taxonomy).
One indicates the work type (i.e., genre), using a value from the LEMDO Work Types
Taxonomy: lwtPlay, lwtPoetry, lwtProse, or lwtShow. (See Work Type Taxonomy.)
Each
<catRef>
element has two attributes:
@scheme and
@target. Use the
@scheme attribute to point to the xml:id of the taxonomy; the value must have the tax: prefix. Use the
@target attribute to point to the value as defined in that taxonomy; the value must have
the cat: prefix.
Optionally, you can add a
<catRef>
to describe the origin of the document using the LEMDO Document Histories Taxonomy.
Semi-diplomatic transcriptions might have come from a converted IML file or from TCP. If this is the case for your file, use the appropriate value: edhSourceIML or edhSourceTCP. If you have transcribed the play yourself into a LEMDO XML template file, you do
not need to describe the origin of the document; in this case, you will simply record
your witness in the
<sourceDesc>
element.
When a semantic line is too long for the compositorial line, the compositor will insert
the final word(s) on the line above or below, usually inserting an opening parenthesis
before the word(s).
Collectively, these words are known as hungwords. Words that are set above the semantic line to which they belong are known as turnovers:
Words that are set below the semantic line to which they belong are known as turnunders:
Practice: Encode Hungwords
When you are transcribing your semi-diplomatic transcription, type the hungword in
the semantic line to which it belongs. Tag turnovers with the
<seg>
element thus:
<body> <!-- ... -->
<sp who="spkr:other"> <speaker rendition="rnd:italic">K.</speaker> <ab>May we with right & conscience make this<seg type="turnover">(claime?</seg> </ab> </sp> <!-- ... --> </body>
Tag turnunders with the
<seg>
element thus:
<body> <!-- ... -->
<sp who="spkr:other"> <speaker rendition="rnd:italic">Lord.</speaker> <ab>
There is a saying very old and true,
<lb/>If you will <hi rendition="rnd:italic">France</hi> win,
<lb/>Then with <hi rendition="rnd:italic">Scotland</hi> first begin:
<lb/>For once the Eagle, England being in pray,
<lb/>To his vnfurnish nest the weazel Scot
<lb/>Would suck her egs, playing the mouse in absence of the<seg type="turnunder">(cat:</seg> <lb/>To spoyle and hauock more than she can eat.
</ab> </sp> <!-- ... --> </body>
When we render these lines, we will push the hungwords above or below the line as
needed.
Special Case: Encode Hungwords on Empty Lines
Some hungwords appear on an otherwise empty line.
If you come across this scenario, encode the hungword as usual. Encode the white space
as vertical white space. See Practice: Encode Vertical White Space.
For example:
<sp xml:id="emd1HW_Q1_sp329"> <speaker>Bell.</speaker> <ab>
So Poke my ru<g ref="lig:ff">ff</g>e now, my gowne, my gown, haue
<seg type="turnunder">(I my fall<hi rendition="rnd:italic">?</hi> </seg> <space dim="vertical" unit="line" quantity="1"/> <lb type="wln" n="794"/>Wher’s my fall <hi rendition="rnd:italic">Roger</hi>?
</ab> </sp>
Introduction to Signature Marks
LEMDO captures two categories of signature marks, both in the context of the semi-diplomatic
transcriptions: the signature marks explicitly printed in the original text (on signed pages), and those implied by the imposition of the early modern book (inferred or
bibliographic signature numbers).
Signature Marks
Signature marks were meant to help the book binder assemble printed sheets in the
right order. Early modern printed books were constructed out of folded sheets of paper.
Normally, a book printed in folio is made from gatherings of three folded sheets (a folio in sixes). Each sheet is
folded in half and the three sheets are then nested or quired.1 Normally, a book printed in quarto is made from one sheet of paper folded twice (a quarto in fours) or from two quired
twice-folded sheets (a quarto in eights).
Common Book Formats for Plays
Book format
Folds per sheet
Leaves per sheet
Pages per sheet
Quired sheets in gathering
Folio
1
2
4
3 or 4 with some gatherings in 1 or 2 (usually preliminary materials)
Quarto
2
4
8
1 or 2
To help the bookbinder fold and quire these sheets together in the right order to
make a book, each sheet is marked with a signature mark. The signature mark is an alphanumeric string appearing at the bottom of what will
become a page when the sheet is folded and bound. A gathering marked with A on the first sheet, A2 on the second, and so on is called the A gathering. A gathering marked with B on the first leaf, B2 on the second leaf, and so on is called the B gathering.
The printer uses 23 letters in these alphanumeric strings: the standard English alphabet
but with only one of I or J (interchangeable characters in early modern English) and only one of U or V (also interchangeable in early modern English); W is omitted because of the potential confusion with VV. For long books that require more than 23 gatherings, the printer goes through the
alphabet again, like this: Aa, Bb, and so on. A third set of gatherings would be numbered Aaa, Bbb, and so on.
When the sheets are folded, the signature marks appear at the bottom of some pages.
They are never on the verso (second side) of a leaf, which means they appear only on the right side of an opening (the two-page spread that you are looking at when you read a book). They usually
do not appear on the conjugate leaves (the second leaf of a folded sheet in the case of a folio, or the two leaves that
remain connected in the final binding regardless of folding and cutting).
The following table gives the most common patterns for signature marks in folio-size
books. Because the A gathering is often the title gathering (with an unsigned title
page and fewer quired sheets), this table describes a typical B gathering:
Folio Signature Mark Sequences
Number of sheets quired
Number of leaves
Name
Sequence
1
2
Folio in twos
B on 1st leaf; 2nd leaf usually unsigned
2
4
Folio in fours
B on 1st leaf; B2 on 2nd leaf; 3rd and 4th leaves (conjugate with 2nd and 1st) unsigned
3
6
Folio in sixes
B on 1st leaf; B2 on 2nd leaf; B3 on 3rd leaf; 4th, 5th, and 6th leaves (conjugate
with 3rd, 2nd, and 1st) unsigned
4
8
Folio in eights
B on 1st leaf; B2 on 2nd leaf; B3 on 3rd leaf; B4 on 4th leaf; 5th, 6th, 7th, and
8th leaves (conjugate with 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st) unsigned
The following table gives the most common patterns for signature marks in quarto-size
books, again taking the B gathering as an example:
For a video introduction to the anatomy of books (including signature marks), see
Anne Peale’s Key Terms in Book History on the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for the History of the Book Instructional Videos page.
For a video guide to book format (quartos, folios, etc.), see Elizabeth Quarmby-Lawrence’s
Bibliographical Formats on the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for the History of the Book Media Content page.
Running titles are encoded as forme works using the
<fw>
element and the
@type attribute with the value runningTitle. Supply running titles with the
<supplied>
element only when the number is cut off, fuzzy, or over-inked. The following is a
typical running title:
<fw type="runningTitle">The Life of Henry the Fift.</fw>
The default rendering of anything tagged with
<fw>
and the runningTitle value on the
@type attribute is italicization. You can override our generic styling in a number of ways;
for information on adding styling to your text, see Introduction to Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions. The default placement for anything tagged as a running title is centre top. If your
anthology wants you to capture the composition of the page and a running title is
not in the centre top of a page, add a
@place attribute with a value from LEMDO’s placement taxonomy. Read more about placement and see examples of placement values in Placement Taxonomy.
If your anthology wants you to capture font features like italics, note that running
titles are sometimes only partially set in italic type or partially set in roman type.
If a running title is fully roman, add a
@rendition attribute to the
<fw>
element with the value rnd:normal. If the running title is partially in roman type, wrap a
<hi>
element around the part that is in roman and add the
@rendition attribute to the
<hi>
element. Read more about encoding inline style in semi-diplomatic transcriptions
in Encode Inline Style Using Pre-Formed Values in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions.
Signed Leaves
Explicit signature marks are encoded as forme works using the
<fw>
element and the
@type attribute with the value sig. Infer and supply signature marks with the
<supplied>
element only when the number is cut off, fuzzy, or over-inked. The following is a
typical signature mark:
<fw type="sig">A1</fw>
You may close up spaces in your encoding between the letter and the number if the
witness has spaces, unless your anthology lead tells you otherwise. For example, if
the leaf is numbered A 2 in the forme work, encode it as A2.
<fw type="sig">A2</fw>
If your anthology wants you to capture the composition of the page in full and the
signature mark in your witness has spaces, close up the space between the letter and
the number in your transcription (for machine-reading purposes) but add a
@rendition attribute with the value rnd:letterspace to indicate how the signature mark has been composited:
LEMDO has added default styling that places signature marks in the centre bottom of
each page. If your anthology wants you to capture the composition of the page and
a signature mark is not in the centre bottom of a page, add a
@place attribute with a value from LEMDO’s placement taxonomy. Read more about placement and see examples of placement values in Placement Taxonomy.
If the page is not signed, there is nothing to capture in the
<fw>
element. Inferred or bibliographic signature numbers are added to the
<pb>
element. See Introduction to Signature Marks.
Catchwords
Explicit catchwords are encoded as forme works using the
<fw>
element and the
@type attribute with the value catch. Infer and supply catchwords with the
<supplied>
element only when the word is cut off, fuzzy, or over-inked. The following is a typical
catchword:
<fw type="catch">To</fw>
Special case: Catchwords may be in italic type if the word is italic on the next page
(e.g., if it is part of a character name or a stage direction). To encode italicized
catchwords, add the
@rendition attribute with the value rnd:italic on the
<fw>
element. Read more about encoding style in semi-diplomatic transcriptions in Introduction to Style in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions.
LEMDO has added default styling that places catchwords in the right bottom of each
page. If your anthology lead wants you to capture the composition of the page and
a catchword is not in the right bottom of a page, add a
@place attribute with a value from LEMDO’s placement taxonomy. Read more about placement and see examples of placement values in Placement Taxonomy.
Page Numbers
Page numbers refer to the printed numbers in the original playbook, not to the signature
marks or inferred signature numbers. Explicit page numbers are encoded as forme works
using the
<fw>
element and the
@type attribute with the value pageNum. Supply page numbers with the
<supplied>
element only when the number is cut off, fuzzy, or overinked. Signal where the page
number appears using the following
@place values: plc-right-top or plc-left-top:
<fw type="pageNum" place="plc-left-top">54</fw>
Encode Rotated Letters in Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions
Some letters in the semi-diplomatic transcriptions can appear rotated. These instances
may represent misdistributed type, spelling errors, or rotated type; common examples
that are difficult to determine include, for instance, u/n and d/p.
For all instances of rotated letters, editors may transcribe the letter as it might
appear to the casual reader and rotate it using CSS:
<!-- ... --><sp> <speaker>Po.</speaker> <ab>Well, my Maste<hi style="transform:rotate(-180deg);">r</hi>s, I hope you’ll thanke me <lb/>When you heare that I have made proud Rhodon <lb/>A Legier Embassadour in Don Pluto’s Court.</ab> </sp><!-- ... -->
Editors who do not know how to add this styling may add an XML comment noting that
the letter is upside down and a local encoder will add the CSS for you. Write to lemdo@uvic.ca for assistance.
LEMDO’s semi-diplomatic transcriptions are encoded in TEI-XML and supplied in parallel with a facsimile of a single copy (TEI Guidelines). LEMDO recommends that you prepare your semi-diplomatic transcription from a single
material witness. Our suggested criteria for selecting that witness are listed in
Select Images for Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions. Start by providing a faithful transcription of that copy,2 with all of its press variants, and making links from your transcription to facsimile
pages of the witness. LEMDO does not require a horizontal collation of variants; such
collations are expensive and time-consuming.3 For highly canonical plays, the work has already been done. For non-canonical plays,
you have to consider carefully whether horizontal collation is an essential part of
your editorial process or merely an impediment to timely completion of your edition.
You and your anthology leads will make the call about whether or not your edition
will include press variants.
Practice
If you decide that capturing press variants is indeed an essential part of your work,
LEMDO provides two encoding mechanisms for recording variants. Again, you will want
to consult with your anthology leads about which mechanism is the most suitable.
The first mechanism allows you to transcribe your copy and correct readings that were
corrected in other copies via stop-press corrections. The second allows you to transcribe
your copy and collate it against one or more other copies. You will almost always
want to choose the first mechanism. The second mechanism is useful only if your witness
contains the corrected sheets and you want to capture the reading in uncorrected sheets
in other witnesses. You would also use the second mechanism in the unlikely event
that it’s not clear which reading is the correct one.
The first mechanism does help you to establish what is effectively an ideal text of
a publication. For the purposes of the vertical collation that you will do against
your modernized text, you will assume an ideal version of each publication, rather
than a single witness with all its unique imperfections. In other words, we don’t
collate press variants when we are establishing our modernized text; at that stage,
we collate the differences between what publications would be if they consisted entirely
of corrected sheets.
Mechanism 1: Capture Stop Press Corrections Using Sic and Corr
If you are confident that you know which sheets in your witness represent the uncorrected
state and which represent the corrected state, you may use the
<choice>
element with child
<sic>
and
<corr>
elements to capture the corrected readings from other witnesses. In your textual
essay, you will need to document the witnesses you consulted.
In the XML file containing your semi-diplomatic transcription, wrap the uncorrected
character, word, or string in a
<sic>
element. Supply the corrected character, word, or string in the
<corr>
element. Wrap the sibling elements in a parent
<choice>
element.
<ab>And you <choice> <sic>way</sic> <corr>may</corr> </choice> have your wish</ab>
LEMDO’s processing by default displays the uncorrected reading (as of 2020). The first
example is from Q2 of The Honest Whore, Part 1; hovering over the word “way” generates a drop-down box with the word “may”. At some
point, we’ll add processing that allows users to toggle between the readings.
Shakespeare: A Special Case
In the case of Shakespeare, the press variants have been thoroughly documented. We
can, with little difficulty, have both our faithful transcription and our ideal copy.
The folio texts in the NISE anthology have all been checked against the State Library
of New South Wales copy, the source of the facsimiles embedded in the transcriptions.
Where there are uncorrected sheets in this copy, we can turn to the Norton Facsimile (Hinman and Blayney) to supply corrected readings.
In the XML, we tag uncorrected readings in the SLNSW copy with the
<sic>
element. We supply the corrected readings from Hinman and Blayney inside a
<corr>
element. Both elements are children of a
<choice>
element.
Mechanism 2: Capture Press Variants Using a Collation File
To deploy this mechanism, you will need to create a stand-off collation (or ask the
LEMDO team to create it for you. Follow the instructions in Encode Collations. Your
<listWit>
will contain specific copies, rather than publications.
LEMDO does not yet have any examples of plays using this mechanism. Contact the LEMDO team for assistance.
2.Alternatively, you can start with the EEBO-TCP transcription and bring it into alignment
with your chosen witness. Speak to the LEMDO Director about converting a TCP file
to baseline LEMDO TEI.↑
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.
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.
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.
Rylyn Christensen
Rylyn Christensen is an English major at the University of Victoria.
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
Hinman, Charlton and Peter W.M. Blayney, eds. The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare: Based on Folios in the Folger
Shakespeare Library Collection. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. WSB ao884.
Neville, Sarah. The Accidentals Tourist: Greg’s “Rationale of Copy-Text” and the Dawn of Transatlantic
Air Travel.Textual Cultures 14.2 (2021): 18–29. doi 10.14434/tc.v14i2.33649.
Glossary
empty element
“Empty elements are also called milestone or self-closing elements, but LEMDO uses the term empty element. Empty elements do not have child text or element nodes.”
ISE Markup Language (IML)
“The boutique markup language of the Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE).”
semi-diplomatic transcription
“A semi-diplomatic transcription has the editorial treatment type letSemiDiplomatic. We are transitioning away from the ISE term old spelling and are now using the term semi-diplomatic in our documentation and titles. A semi-diplomatic transcription preserves the spelling
and punctuation of the witness. Depending on the anthology’s editorial practice, a
semi-diplomatic transcription might not preserve long s, variants in type (e.g., the
rotunda), or other typographical, scribal, or bibliographical features.”
Metadata
Authority title
Chapter 11. Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Print Playbooks
