Tags for Marking Prose -- Electronic Text Center

Guidelines for SGML Text Mark-up at the Electronic Text Center

David Seaman, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia

Structural Divisions of Prose

Regardless of what TYPE of text you have, you will always want to maintain a hierarchical nesting of divisions in the text body.

In prose your divisions will largely consist of volumes, books, chapters, and letters. Occassionally you will see bits of verse within prose.
Prose (and all types of texts for that matter) are divided and categorized by division tags. From the largest to the smallest, division tags (e.g. <div1> </div1>) are numbered and they must be closed so they do not nest within one another.
IMPORTANT: Every opening division tag must have a <head> even if the content inside the <head> remains empty.

Sample Tagged Prose

Divisional Structure of Prose

If you are doing Brontë's Wuthering Heights, the text's largest division is "volume," and the next largest is "chapter."
THUS:

<TEI.2> [TEI header information goes here] <text id="BroWuth"> <body> <head>Wuthering Heights</body> <div1 type="volume" n="1"> <head>Volume I.</head> <div2 type="chapter" n="1.1"> <head>Chapter I.</head> [TEXT OF CHAPTER ONE, VOLUME ONE GOES HERE] </div2> <div2 type="chapter" n="1.2"> <head>Chapter II.</head> [TEXT OF CHAPTER TWO, VOLUME ONE GOES HERE] </div2> </div1>*

[*NOTE: The <div1> closes only when the end of the "Volume" has actually been reached.]

<div1 type="volume" n="2"> <head>Volume II.</head> <div2 type="chapter" n="2.1"> <head>Chapter I.</head> [TEXT OF CHAPTER ONE, VOLUME TWO GOES HERE, ETC...] </div2> <div2 type="chapter" n="2.2"> [AGAIN, "<div2 type="chapter" n="2.xx", WILL CONTINUE UNTIL THE END OF VOLUME TWO...] </div2> </div1> </body> </text> </TEI.2>

Tagging Prose

The following example is from Dicken's A Christmas Carol

<div1 type="chapter" n="1"> <head> Marley's Ghost </head> <pb n="9" /> <p>Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.</p>

The tags you need for tagging pages, paragraphs, chapters, notes, and typography in prose can be found in the Practical Introduction to the Tag Set.

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