Tags for Marking Verse -- Electronic Text Center

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

David Seaman, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia
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Tags for Marking Verse

These tags are in addition to the general markup tags described in the Practical Introduction to the Tag Set

<lg>

Within a poetic hierarchy, the "smallest" distinct unit of poetic composition gets the element tag <lg> rather than a structural division tag. <lg> </lg> identifies a group of lines, such as a stanza or a sonnet.

Thus a poem broken into stanzas would be tagged:

<div1 type="poem"> <lg type="stanza"> <l> [text of verse] </l> </lg>

In a more highly structured poem, each of the upper and middle units would receive divisional tags while the lowest level gets tagged with the line grouping. Thus, in a poem arranged poem-book-canto- stanza:

<div1 type="poem"> <div2 type="book"> <div3 type="canto"> <lg type="stanza">

The verse structural division tags commonly contain additional descriptive attributes such as:

n=
title=

<l> : Each line within a line group must be tagged <l> which often has the attribute n="".

If a metrical line <l> is incomplete or is shared by more than one character, mark each line with <l>, using the attribute part= and one of the following values:

part="Y" : the line is metrically incomplete
part="N" : the line is incomplete or no claim is made to completeness
part="I" : the initial part of an incomplete line
part="M" : the medial part(s) of an incomplete line
part="F" : the final part of an incomplete line

Sample Tagged Verse

Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark

<div1 type="fit" n="1"> <head> Fit the First: THE LANDING </head> <pb n="45" /> <lg type="stanza"> <l>"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,</l> <l rend="indent">As he landed his crew with care;</l> <l>Supporting each man on the top of the tide</l> <l rend="indent">By a finger entwined in his hair.</l> </lg> <pb n="46" /> <lg type="stanza"> <l>"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:</l> <l rend="indent">That alone should encourage the crew.</l> <l>Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:</l> <l rend="indent">What I tell you three times is true."</l> </lg> [ETC....] </div1>

To see what this encoding actually looks like, Click Here.

For a more extensive example of how to tag poetry, see Poe's Annabel Lee

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