Queries about Captions, Headings and Quotations

Captions in figures
ARGUMENTS in verse
Quotations on title pages
Authorial interjections in quotations
Changing &startq; into <Q> and <HI>
<Q>s broken by s
Q+BIBL inside HEAD
Q+BIBL inside TRAILER
Using running header for division header
Placement of epigraphs

1. Captions in Figures

In general: we believe that the number of people interested in searching for illustrations is fairly large; consequently, capturing caption text is important.

Example: lengthy text within an illustration.

We mostly use <HEAD> within <FIGURE> for caption-like material.
 But there is sometimes lengthier text within an illustration
 that seems worthy of capture but is not quite head-like material.
 We have started using within <FIGURE> to capture this
 sort of thing. (And remember that for extreme cases <FIGURE>
 can also contain <TEXT>.)

Example: printers' devices at beginnings or ends of texts.

These figures are frequently ignored by the keyers, but often they are elaborate enough to be worth capturing. If they include a motto or a caption they are particularly worth looking for.

<FIGURE><HEAD>EX IGNE RESVRGIT VIRTVS</HEAD></FIGURE>

Example: title pages with decorative frames.

In a title page with a highly elaborate frame that seems to deserve its own <FIGURE> tag, the question becomes where to place the tag relative to the text of the page. The solution is to place the entire text of the title page (in s) within a <FIGURE> tag.

Viz.,

<DIV1 TYPE="title page">

 <FIGURE>
 The first parte of the Mirour for Magistrates, contai|ning the falles of the first infortunate Princes of this lande:
 From the coming of Brute to the incarnation of our sauiour and redemer Iesu Christe.
 
 <BIBL>Ad Romanos. 13.2.</BIBL>
 <Q>Quisquis se opponit potestati, Dei ordinationi resistit.</Q>
 
 Imprinted at London by Thomas Marshe. Anno 1574. Cum Priuilegio.
 </FIGURE>

</DIV1>

Example: a figure before the head of a division.

This can be handled by giving the illustration a DIV of its own; alternatively, it is possible to place a <FIGURE> within a <HEAD>.

Example: fore-and-aft illustrations.

FIGURE has always been part of the content model of HEAD and is now part of the content model of TRAILER as well. A TYPE attribute has also been added to TRAILER (making it more like HEAD). So, if you think a particuilar illustration is best kept within a given DIV even though it appears after the concluding text elements (TRAILER, CLOSER, etc.) of the DIV, you can keep it there, within a TRAILER (probably best confined to its very own TRAILER).

Viz.,

<DIV1 TYPE="tale">
<HEAD>Fabula Porci</HEAD>
.........
<TRAILER>Here ends the Tale of the Pig</TRAILER>
<CLOSER>
<BYLINE>By E.G. Sneed</BYLINE>
<DATELINE>Written at his house in Bleeth, <DATE>1642</DATE</DATELINE>
</CLOSER>
<PB>
<TRAILER><FIGURE><HEAD>The Pig Rampant</HEAD></FIGURE></TRAILER>
</DIV1>

Or even,

...<TRAILER TYPE="illustration"><FIGURE>
<HEAD>The Pig Rampant</HEAD></FIGURE></TRAILER>

<HEAD> can be used at the other end in the same way.

2. ARGUMENTS in verse

Headings in verse can often legitimately be tagged instead as <ARGUMENT>, e.g.:

<DIV1 TYPE="poem">
<ARGUMENT>
<L>A caueat conuenient for younkers to see:</L>
<L>How fickle Dame Fancie, doth chaung her degree</L></ARGUMENT>

<DIV1 TYPE="poem">
<ARGUMENT><L>When as occasion moueth,</L>
<L>To answere it behoueth.</L></ARGUMENT>

If for some reason this will not do, you may have to ignore the verse character of the material and call it <HEAD>, placing a <LB> tag at the line break(s).

Alternatively, ignore its head-like character and make it a linegroup at the beginning of the poem.

3. Quotations on title pages

Question: since <EPIGRAPH> can only be used at the beginning or end of a DIV, how do we handle epigraphs that occur in the middle of title pages, with more material coming after?

Obvious quotations on the title page can still be recorded with <Q>, even if we cannot use <EPIGRAPH>.

<Q>Let us either deserve to have a good Prince, or patiently suffer and obey such as we deserve.<BIBL>1 Hom. against Wilfull Reb.</BIBL></Q>

4. Authorial interjections in quotations

Question: If you have a block quotation, with an author interjection halfway through (e.g. "blah blah (as they say) blah blah"), does the interjection go inside or outside the <Q> tag?

Ignore the parenthetical intrusions when tagging the <Q>.

<Q> I must not deny my sins, (says the Man) the righteous man falls seven times a day.</Q>

5. Changing &startq; into <Q> and <HI>

Question: I have spent the past couple of hours changing &startq;s into either <Q> or <HI REND="marginal quotes">. Could I globally replace them with <HI>s? Would it matter if some genuine quotes were tagged as <HI>s? Or do I keep plodding through? The vast majority are not real quotes.

Theoretically, changing them globally to <HI>s would be all right; it does not much matter if we miss a genuine <Q> or two since we are still preserving the <HI>.

Practically, however, one would have to judge from the book in hand whether it is possible to identify the appropriate beginning and end of the highlighted portion automatically. The major reason that we had to resort to the &startq;/&endq; business, and the manual intervention that is involved, is that the affeted text is usally imprecisely located by means of the marginal quotation marks alone. The piece of text that should be placed within the <HI> or <Q> tags often begins in the middle of the line next to which the " appears--and sometimes not even in the same line. Here, for example, is a bit from Sidney, as printed:

................................... The Knights as
soone as they heard the retraite (though they were ea-
gerly set, knowing that courage without discipline is "
nearer beastlinesse then manhood) drew backe their "
swords, though hungrie of more blood : especially the
blacke Knight .......................................

That is, two lines are flagged with the marginal marks, the line ending "is" and the line ending "their." But the bit that should actually be highlighted is, I think, only the clause from "courage" through "manhood," like this:

The Knights as soone as they heard the retraite (though
they were ea|gerly set, knowing that <HI REND="marginal
quotes">courage without discipline is nearer beastlinesse
then manhood</HI>) drew backe their swords, though hungrie
of more blood : especially the blacke Knight

NOTE Remember that this applies to prose, not verse: in verse, we can simply retain the quotation marks as they appear (though I prefer to separate them from the words of the text by a space, unlike regular quotation marks.)

6. <Q>s broken by s

Question: I have a text where quotations stretch over several paragraphs. The vendor began new <Q> tags with the beginning of each paragraph:

<Q>...</Q>
<Q>...</Q>
etc.
As there were so many of them that it would take ages to correct, I didn't change them to multiple paragraphs inside one set of <Q>s, e.g.

<Q>...
...</Q>

I thought that it wouldn't make any difference in terms of searchability.

This is apparently something that the PDCC and Tech are both inclined to do. I find that according to one expert "we've been repairing them when
" it was simple to do so (or when the reviewer was feeling obsessive), but
" leaving them alone when it would take too much effort. This book
" would appear to fall into the latter category. I think you're right
" that the consequences will be minor.
"
" Sometimes the breakup of the <Q> seems to be triggered by the fact
" that the quotation begins *within* a paragraph of the surrounding
" text, and then goes on to be broken into paragraphs in its own right.
" The tagger inserts the <Q> tag to mark the beginning of the quotation,
" reaches the end of the paragraph, and finds that he or she must
" close the <Q> in order to close the , and is then stuck with this
" pattern of <Q> within for the remainder of the <Q>.

If the above message be taken as example, there is as usual disagreement in the ranks about the best way to proceed. Actually, it does not much matter which course is taken. Over all, we would prefer to see the <Q> take precedence and divide it into s right from the start (though this might be thought to place a break where there really isn't one, in the middle of the in which the <Q> begins). I.e.:

...according to one expert
<Q>we've been repairing them ... will be minor.
Sometimes the breakup ... remainder of the Q
</Q>

Others prefer to respect the paragraphing of the book and close the <Q> after that first , then reopen it with a within it. I.e.

...according to one expert
<Q>we've been repairing them ... will be minor.</Q>

<Q>Sometimes the breakup ... remainder of the Q</Q>

7. Q+BIBL inside HEAD

HEAD or EPIGRAPH: a series of chapters, each devoted to explicating a difficult passage of scripture, with the passage itself printed at the head of the chapter, like this:

The first Text Enquired into, viz.
Gen. XLIX. 10.
The Scepter shall not depart from Ju|dah,
nor a Law-giver from between his feet,
until Shiloh come.

This could be tagged as a head (or as pair of heads):

<HEAD>The first Text Enquired into, viz.
Gen. XLIX. 10.
The Scepter shall not depart from Ju|dah,
nor a Law-giver from between his feet,
until Shiloh come.</HEAD>

or as a head and epigraph:

<HEAD>The first Text Enquired into, viz.</HEAD>
<EPIGRAPH>
<BIBL>Gen. XLIX. 10.</BIBL>
<Q>The Scepter shall not depart from Ju|dah,
nor a Law-giver from between his feet,
until Shiloh come.</Q></EPIGRAPH>

The latter follows our rules for using EPIGRAPH to tag quotations at the head of sermons and commentaries, and captures the Q-ness and BIBL-ness of the parts, but it leaves a truncated and uninformative HEAD.

Resolution? Dump EPIGRAPH but keep Q and BIBL within HEAD, thus:

<HEAD>The first Text Enquired into, viz.
<Q><BIBL>Gen. XLIX. 10.</BIBL>
The Scepter shall not depart from Ju|dah,
nor a Law-giver from between his feet,
until Shiloh come.</Q></HEAD>

Similarly:

<HEAD>The second Text enquired into, viz.
<Q><BIBL>Exod. XXVIII. 30.</BIBL>
Thou shalt put in the Breast-plate of
Iudgment the Urim and the Thum|mim.</Q></HEAD>

and

<HEAD>The fifth Text enquired into, viz.
<Q><BIBL>Matthew XXVII. 5.</BIBL>
He departed, and went and hanged himself.</Q>
Compared with
<Q><BIBL>Acts I. 18.</BIBL>
Falling head-long, he burst asunder in
the midst, and all his Bowels gushed
out.</Q></HEAD>

8. Q + BIBL inside TRAILER

The dtd has been revised to make TRAILER the same as HEAD in contents.

Example: Many of the chapters in my text ended with Latin Bible quotations, preceded by "Amen." There was an inconsistent use of Q or TRAILER.

The challenge here is to recognize the special chapter-ending quality of the quotations while still tagging "Amen" as TRAILER. There are two choices:

<TRAILER>Amen.</TRAILER>
<EPIGRAPH><Q>¶ Arbitramur iustificari hominem per fi|dem sine
operibus legis.</Q>
<BIBL>Ro. 3</BIBL></EPIGRAPH>

or (now that the dtd has been revised to make TRAILER the same as HEAD in contents):

<TRAILER>Amen.</TRAILER>
<TRAILER><Q>¶ Arbitramur iustificari hominem per fi|dem sine
operibus legis.</Q>
<BIBL>Ro. 3</BIBL></TRAILER>

9. Using running header for division header

Occasionally a new division such as a chapter will begin without a division header, but the text contains a running header with the information. In this case we would use the first of a set of running headers as if it were a division header. Using the running header as if it were a division header requires that you locate the beginning of the division correctly. There is no guarantee that it will be at the top of the page on which the running head appears.

10. Placement of epigraphs

Question: In the EEBO tagging cheat sheet, it says that <EPIGRAPH> can be used at the head or foot of a text division. However in the keyboarding instructions it only mentions use at the beginning of a division. Is it ok to use <EPIGRAPH> for e.g. a quote that appears at the very end of a text?

The inconsistency seems to reside in TEI itself. The prose definition in P3 describes an epigraph as a quotation appearing 'at the start of a section or chapter.' On the other hand, the TEI dtd includes EPIGRAPH in the element class 'divbot' which is defined as containing 'elements which can occur at the end of a text division.'
The same inconsistency persists in version P4 of the TEI.

Since there is no corresponding element for quotations at the end we go for symmetry and allow EPIGRAPHs at either top or bottom--in keeping with the TEI dtd, but in violation of the common meaning of the word and the TEI's prose description. And we have tagged closing quotations as EPIGRAPH before.