TEI by Example Module 1: Common Structure, Elements, and Attributes Edward Vanhoutte Ron Van den Branden Melissa Terras Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ALLC) Centre for Data, Culture and Society, University of Edinburgh, UK Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH), University College London, UK Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH), King’s College London, UK Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium
Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature Koningstraat 18 9000 Gent Belgium
ctb@kantl.be Edward Vanhoutte Melissa Terras Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) , Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Belgium Gent
Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (CTB) Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature Koningstraat 18 9000 Gent Belgium

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9 July 2010 TEI by Example. Edward Vanhoutte editor Ron Van den Branden editor Melissa Terras editor

Digitally born

TEI by Example offers a series of freely available online tutorials walking individuals through the different stages in marking up a document in TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). Besides a general introduction to text encoding, step-by-step tutorial modules provide example-based introductions to eight different aspects of electronic text markup for the humanities. Each tutorial module is accompanied with a dedicated examples section, illustrating actual TEI encoding practise with real-life examples. The theory of the tutorial modules can be tested in interactive tests and exercises.

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Introduction

The conclusions and the work of the TEI consortium are formulated as guidelines, rules, and recommendations rather than standards, because it is acknowledged that each scholar must have the freedom of expressing their own theory of text by encoding the features they think important in the text. A wide array of possible solutions to encoding matters is demonstrated in the TEI Guidelines which therefore should be considered a reference manual rather than a tutorial.

Mastering the complete TEI encoding scheme implies a steep learning curve, but few projects require a complete knowledge of the TEI. Therefore, a manageable subset of the full TEI encoding scheme was published as TEI Lite, currently describing 140 elements. Originally intended as an introduction and a didactic stepping stone to the full recommendations, TEI Lite has, since its publication in 1995, become one of the most popular TEI customizations and proves to meet the needs of 90% of the TEI community, 90% of the time.

TEI by Example features freely available online tutorials walking individuals through the different stages in marking up a document in TEI (Text Encoding Initiative). It aims to help students of text encoding to cope with the full TEI guidelines and the learning curve involved.

The ground rules that are discussed in this module apply to the most recent version of the TEI at the time of writing, i.e., TEI P5.See for historical backgrounds of text encoding, the TEI, and the TEI Guidelines.