Introduction to TEI

The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

Joey Takeda

Digital Humanities Innovation Lab, Simon Fraser University

HSS24 | February 14, 2024

Unceded territory of the səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations

The TEI

A set of guidelines for encoding text

A non-profit organization

A community or consortium of users

Website: https://tei-c.org/

The TEI

Is a markup language written in XML

Currently in its 5th major revision (P5 4.9.0)

Used by many projects across the world in many different languages and for many different reasons

Example Projects

Landscapes of Injustice Archive

https://loi.uvic.ca/archive/

The Yellow Nineties

https://1890s.ca/

The Winnifred Eaton Archive

https://winnifredeatonarchive.org

Scholarly Editing

https://scholarlyediting.org

Encoding, markup, et cetera...

At its core, marking up text is a way of identifying and differentiating bits of text from other bits of texts.

Excerpt from O'Hara, Frank. "Having a Coke With You." In The Collection Poems of Frank O'Hara, edited by Donald Allen. University of California Press, 1991.

We do this all the time!

Italics for emphasis

Underlining for titles

Bold for extra-emphasis

Quotation marks for outside attribution or skepticism

All capitals to YELL

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Encoding, markup, et cetera

But these are contextual and local

E.g. different types of punctuation for levels of quotation

And they are subject to varying interpretations

What is markup?

Markup refers to a structured way to identify and separate textual information

The most common form of markup is a structure called XML (aka "pointy brackets")

Semantics v. Display

Semantic or Descriptive markup = encoding what the thing is

Display or Presentational markup = encoding how you want that thing to look

Encoding Texts as Literary Criticism

Marking up text is an assertion of your knowledge and your interpretation of the text

What does the text (form and content) express?

The Process of Marking Up Texts

The process is analytical, strategic, and interpretive.

It is analytical, in identifying a set of components into which the text can meaningfully be broken and whose relationship can be represented

Markup is strategic, in that text encoding is always aimed (deliberately or by default) at some intellectual or practical goal

And markup is interpretive, in that the act of encoding will always take place through a connection between an observing individual and a source object.

Julia Flanders, Syd Bauman, and Sarah Connell. "Text Encoding." Doing Digital Humanities, edited by Constance Crompton, Richard Lane, and Ray Siemens. Routledge, 2016.

Why should we encode texts?

Accessibility

Distribution

Flexibility

Interoperability

Convertibility (i.e. from one format to another)

Analysis (Distant Reading, et cetera)

Answering existing (and asking new) research questions

XML

XML = eXtensible Markup Language

XML is not a set language unto itself, but a grammar

There is nothing inherent about the function of XML

It is purely a structure--a way of organizing

Anyone can conceive of an XML dialect (e.g. it is extensible)

XML

Markup codifies intentions


                    "Sure"


                <quotation>Sure</quotation>


                <sarcasm>Sure</sarcasm>


                <skepticism>Sure</skepticism>


                <title>Sure</title>

XML is Everywhere

HTML (HyperText Markup Language: Every website)

KML (Keyhole Markup Language: Google Maps)

RDF (Resource Description Framework: Library catalogues)

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics: Digital Images)

OOXML (Open Office XML: This presentation, word documents, et cetera)

XML

XML is hierarchical

XML is a tree-like structure

And is often described in genealogical terms

XML

The two pointy brackets is called an element

E.g. <item> = the item element

All elements have start and end tags
<ingredients> is the start tag and </ingredients> is the end tag

Elements can also have attributes (@quantity)
Attributes must have a value: <item quantity="2">.

All XML structures have a "root" (or container) element

Elements nest and use genealogical terms

The ingredients element is a parent of item

<option>s are children of <choice>

Adapted from Nigella Lawson's "Chocolate Cherry Mousse" from the New York Times

XML Explained

Elements cannot overlap

✅ <shelf><book>Anna Karenina</book></shelf>

❌ <shelf><book>Anna Karenina</shelf></book>

The TEI = XML Vocabulary

The TEI defines elements and attributes to create a standard for encoding texts

All texts must be called <text>

All divisions (whether they be chapters, sections, et cetera) must be called <div>

All paragraphs must be called <p>

All words must be called <w>

+++

The TEI

Offers a rich vocabulary and method to encode:

Bibliographic and structural features: page breaks, headers, footers, page numbers, line breaks, divisions, paragraphs, line groups, etc

Interpretative features: stage movement, emphasis, place names, proper names, dialogue direction, etc

Editorial apparatus: hands, witnesses, collation, gaps, additions, deletions, etc

Linguistic features: morphemes, feature structures, orthographic form, etc

Spoken features: incidents, pauses, shifts, "communicative phenomenon", etc

Metadata: various classification schemes, provenance, manuscript description, etc

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Components of a (basic) TEI file

Root <TEI> element

A <teiHeader> that describes both the file and the primary source that you are transcribing (if applicable)

A <text> that contains the text of the document

Within text, you can have a <front>, <body>, or <back>

                
<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
<!--...-->
</TEI>

                
<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
  <teiHeader>
      <fileDesc>
         <titleStmt>
            <title>Title</title>
         </titleStmt>
         <publicationStmt>
            <p>Publication Information</p>
         </publicationStmt>
         <sourceDesc>
            <p>Information about the source</p>
         </sourceDesc>
      </fileDesc>
  </teiHeader>
  <!--...-->
</TEI>

                
<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
  <teiHeader>
      <fileDesc>
         <titleStmt>
            <title>Title</title>
         </titleStmt>
         <publicationStmt>
            <p>Publication Information</p>
         </publicationStmt>
         <sourceDesc>
            <p>Information about the source</p>
         </sourceDesc>
      </fileDesc>
  </teiHeader>
  <text>
      <body>
         <p>Some text here.</p>
      </body>
  </text>
</TEI>

TEI

Note that the TEI is huge (586 elements)

No one uses the entirety of the TEI tagset

Individual projects customize the TEI for their own needs, usually using a small subset of the overall tagset

E.g. Drama projects will use the drama tagset (<sp> for speech, <speaker> for speaker, et cetera) and discard the linguistic/dictionary tagset (<entry> for dictionary entries, <m> for morpheme, etc).

The Guidelines: Some Examples

What to encode?

Input =/= Output

Encode what you care about and what you have time to encode

If you don't encode it, you can't do much with it

But: you don't need to encode or retain everything

@ShitPlanning

Roma: Create your own TEI subset

https://roma.tei-c.org/

Okay, I'm convinced...where do I start?

TEI Editors

Since TEI is XML, you don't need special software to start encoding...

But there are some tools that can make it easier

oXygen XML Editor

https://www.oxygenxml.com/

VSCode + Scholarly XML Extension

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=raffazizzi.sxml

WYSIWYG

Or, WYSIWYE (What you see is what you encode)

TEI Publisher

https://teipublisher.com/exist/apps/tei-publisher-home/index.html

LEAF-Writer

https://leaf-writer.leaf-vre.org/

My stuff is encoded...what can I do with it?

TEI Garage

https://teigarage.tei-c.org/

CETEIcean 🐳

https://github.com/TEIC/CETEIcean

I want to learn more!

DHSI: Text Encoding Fundamentals and their Application (June 3–7, 2024)

https://dhsi.org/on-campus-courses2024/

Learning more about the TEI

The TEI Guidelines: https://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/index.html

TEI By Example: https://teibyexample.org/

TEI GitHub: https://github.com/TEIC/TEI

TEI listServ: https://listserv.brown.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=TEI-L


                
                    Thanks for listening!
                    Any questions?


                    
                        Thanks for listening!
                        Any questions?
                        
                            takeda@sfu.ca

                
                    
                        
                            Digital Research Alliance of Canada
                                 (Meghan Landry, Megan Meredith-Lobay,
                                  and Pier-Luc St-Onge)
                            Simon Fraser University Library
                            TEI Technical Council and the Women Writer's Project