Encoding
The documents are encoded in XML following the P5 Guidelines of the Textual Encoding Initiative (TEI) with no modifications to the P5 schema.
General Markup
We use standard elements for encoding the structure of the texts, including <pb>, <p>, and <lb>.
We use <choice> to encode the combinations of original and regularized readings that allow us to present the same texts in both the Transcription and Reading Version views. To document the original readings, we employ <orig>, <sic>, and <abbr>, and indicate the corresponding regularized forms with <reg>, <corr>, and <expan>.
We encode our annotations with <note>, with a value for the type attribute of authorial, contextual, or transcription. For the second category, we employ values for the subtype attribute of geographical, historical, biographical, lexical, genetic, and general (see Annotations for an explanation of these categories). We have endeavored to annotate in a fashion that notes pertain to only one of these categories at a time, but when an annotation necessarily touches on more than one, we use the value for subtype that we believe should receive priority.
Semantic Markup
In each XML file, we have encoded various categories of items that pertain to the content or meaning of the text. These include dates and the names of people, institutions, places, and events, as well as the titles of written works. All the items discussed in this section are highlighted in the Semantic Markup view. We have done so in a largely standard fashion, but for the sake of clarity, we explain our specific approach in detail here.
For the items in the collection Selections from Manuscript of The Florida Negro, we have only conducted semantic markup on aspects of the text that we understand to be possible points of connection to Muse's notes and narratives.
Dates
Our markup of dates follows standard TEI-XML usage, employing <date when="YYYY-MM-DD">. We handle a standard situation as follows: <date when="1936-04-01">April 1, 1936</date>. When we have only a year, or only year and month, we use the following, respectively: <date when="1936">1936</date> and <date when="1936-04">April 1936</date>. Because TEI-XML does not accept a date without a year, when we have only month and day, we use 9999 as a placeholder. We mark up indirect references, such as in <date when="1970">the next day</date>, when the date in question can be determined from context.
Names
We have used <name> to mark up the names of all people; groups of people; companies, organizations, and similar entities; and events. We use use the type attribute to distinguish these categories and, in some cases, employ subtype to provide a further level of differentiation. We have opted to approach names this way, instead of using the separate elements <persName>, <placeName>, <orgName>, and <event>, so that all names are grouped together, and because we want to have the flexibility to add new types of names without complicating the paradigm.
Individual people
We use <name type="person"> to mark up the proper name of a person, as in <name type="person">William M. Raines/name> or <name type="person">principal</name> where principal refers, for instance, to a specific, identifiable individual.
We also use <name> to mark up pronouns (he, etc.) when they refer to specific, identifiable people.
Places
We encode the proper names of places of any type with <name type="place">. This includes buildings, streets, cities, states (and other political divisions), as well as topographical features. We also mark common nouns or phrases that refer to specific, identifiable places, as in <name type="place">river</name> where river refers, for instance, to the St. Johns.
We use the subtype attribute to provide a more specific category for a place, employing the following as a controlled vocabulary: city, county, state, neighborhood, street, cemetery, river, and creek. We treat addresses as names of places, as in <name type="place" subtype="address">123 Main Street</name> and consider references to street corners to be addresses: <name type="place" subtype="address">Ashley at corner Broad Street</name>.
We have used <ptr> when marking up places as a way to reference the corresponding entities in the XML file that contains the list of places that is used by the mapping functionality we have included in the edition: <name type="place" subtype="city"><ptr target="jacksonville-fl"/>Jacksonville</name>.
Organizations, companies, and similar entities
For all organizations, companies or other groupings of people, we use <name type="organization"> with a value for subtype from the following list: company, non-profit, governmental, educational, religious, family, social. When, by context, one of these terms may refer to a building and an organization simultaneously, we designate it as both, as in <name type="place" subtype="building"><name type="institution" subtype="educational">LaVilla Park School</name></name> and <name type="place" subtype="building"><name type="institution" subtype="religious">Christian Methodist Episcopal Church</name></name>.
Events
We use <name type="event"> to indicate the name of a specific event or isolated momenti time, such as in <name type="event">Emancipation</name>.
Titles
We mark up the titles of written works using <title level="m"> (for monographic) for books, paintings, poems, and films. We use <title level="a"> (for analytic) for songs and journal articles.