Tag Glossary

ADDRESS, a sub-element within PLACE, captures the specific address where a person lived or where a specific and significant event occurred. It is available within Biography and Writing tagsets and in freestanding events, and is placed around one or more AddrLine. AddrLine is a required sub-element before words are allowed. Address has two optional attributes, Current and Reg.

The following types of information can be captured under address:

• Private house names (a British phenomenon) and numbered street address.
• Street names and squares when they act as addresses and not placenames.
• Lanes, Terraces, Places, Walks
• Parts of streets: i.e., Upper Wimpole Street [Note: provide Reg attribute for "Wimpole" in order to ensure the address is indexed in the appropriate place.

ADVERTISING, available anywhere in WRITING documents though belonging conceptually with the PRODUCTION aspect, attends to the details surrounding the promotion and marketing of a text. For instance, you may want to discuss examples of interesting publicity or promotional stunts. This element has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

An element in WRITING > PRODUCTION. It has no mandatory or optional attributes or sub-elements, dates, and other significant writers' names. This element creates a record of a work's selection for and appearance in anthologies; it contains relevant details surrounding significant instances when a text is anthologized (how it's framed; how it's described; how frequently it is chosen). Used (not exclusively) for inclusion in important modern or contemporary collections (e.g. Gilbert and Gubar, Palgrave, Norton), or for first or significant appearance in historical ones.

This element belongs in WRITING > PRODUCTION. It contains at least a sentence of information about where significant copies/manuscripts (of her work) or evidence about her resides. It should contain a tagged PLACE (e.g. public library at Northallerton) or an ORGNAME (Folger Shakespeare Library) except in occasional instances of privately owned or equivalent. This element offers data for tracking mss or significant printed copies, collections now extant, copies historically lost or found or only heard of.

Belonging to PLACE, a core tag globally available and the largest bucket holding together the sub-elements defining location, AREA encloses geographical locations more expansive and complex than those captured by the GEOG tag, such as continents. It has two optional attributes, CURRENT and REG.

PATTITUDES, an element belonging with the PRODUCTION material but available anywhere in WRITING documents, is better expressed with the lengthy phrase: attitudes to gender, writing, gender and writing, or writing as a woman. It captures comments on a writer's beliefs and assumptions about the practice and profession of writing and the relationship of gender to it. Her attitudes may be surmised from her own specific comments about what writing means to her, or from a very general reading of her oeuvre. It captures material less goal-oriented than the element PMOTIVES, which deals with particular reasons for writing. PATTITUDES has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

AUTHORSUMMARY is placed at the opening of WRITING discussions. As the equivalent of a Div1, it occurs outside any Div1, standing on its own. It is devised for researchers to make summary statements about an author before opening individual PRODUCTION, RECEPTION, or TEXTUALFEATURES elements. You are encouraged to use this element to preface the writing document of each woman writer. It is useful both for minor writers about whom little is known, and for major writers whose work needs to be summarized before launching into the details. It must be as brief as possible, while situating its subject as to period, most characteristic genres, and reasons for interest in her. It allows use of three main sub-elements: EXTENTOFOEUVRE, GENRENAME, and GENERICRANGE. If you need to say more, then move into a PRODUCTION, RECEPTION, or TEXTUALFEATURES element. The usual Div1 inclusions are also available within AUTHORSUMMARY: NAME, DATE, PLACE, and ORGNAME.

PAUTHORSHIP is available within WRITING > PRODUCTION. It enables discussion of issues surrounding a text's authorship. Encloses statement or debate, defined in the relevant attributes: AuthornameType, AuthorshipControversy, ControversyDate, and Collaboration.

This sub-element is found in BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION.It captures important educational awards given to future writers, and contains the name of the award, or occasionally a sentence concerning it. It has optional attributes of AWARDTYPE and REG. REG allows us to regularize the name of an award when we have not been able to express it in a standard form in the prose.

RBESTKNOWNWORK is an element belonging to the RECEPTION aspect of entries, though available anywhere in the WRITING section. It identifies the single work whose reputation exceeds others, according to external criteria (best known in literary circles), and can occur once per genre for some writers. It encloses a statement, not just a title. 

BIOGRAPHY is the large, all-encompassing element in all BIOGRAPHY sections of author profiles. It incorporates everything that goes into this section.

Birth is one of the 16 major BIOGRAPHY elements defined as integral to mapping a woman's life. It captures information concerning the date, place, birth position and context of a person's birth where known. This mandatory element is usually the second Div1 content element in a BIOGRAPHY section (after PERSONNAME). It will almost always include a chronstruct for date of birth, and has one sub-element, BIRTHPOSITION, for capturing position in family (attributes Eldest, Youngest, Only), or more general description.

BIRTHPOSITION is an optional sub-element located within BIOGRAPHY > BIRTH. It captures information about a writer's position within her family. In systematically capturing information about BIRTHPOSITION, we are providing material for investigating its influence, especially in relation to gender. It has values Eldest, Youngest, or Only.

BIRTHNAME is found in BIOGRAPHY. It captures all the names a person was assigned at birth. Inside DATASTRUCT and DATAITEM, it serves as a structural holding bucket for the elements SURNAME and GIVEN. It has two attributes: REG and WROTEORPUBLISHEDAS.

An optional sub-element in BIOGRAPHY > DEATH, it is used to record the cause of an author’s death, where known.

This element belongs to WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES. It captures the names of significant characters. It has no mandatory sub-elements, although you may want to use this in conjunction with the TCHARACTERIZATION element and perhaps with the TCHARACTERTTYPE/ROLE element. The REG attribute here works the same way as the REG attribute for NAME.

This element is found in WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES. It captures information about the societal roles of characters. There are no optional or mandatory sub-elements, though this element may be used in conjunction with the TCHARACTERIZATION element and possibly with TCHARACTERNAME. An optional attribute, Protagonist, with values of male and female, is used when appropriate to distinguish protagonists or central figures from others.

This element belongs to WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES. It captures general and relevant information and comment about those fictional characters who populate an author's work. It contains at least a full statement. It often contains the ancillary elements TCHARACTERTTYPE/ROLE or TCHARACTERNAME, but it has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

This sub-element is found within BIOGRAPHY > FAMILY. It captures the fact that a woman had no children. We hope to facilitate research on the material effects of having or not having children on a woman writer's life. This tag systematizes information about women who did not have children. This element also captures discussions of significant issues such as infertility that led to life-long childlessness and how that affected the writer's life.

This sub-element can be found in BIOGRAPHY > FAMILY. It systematizes information concerning the number of children a woman had and is meant to capture issues around children rather than a discussion of specific children. It is placed around the whole sentence describing the number of children she had. It is clearly related to the element CHILDLESSNESS, but it is very seldom that both are used in the same entry.

This element can be found in WRITING > PRODUCTION. It is used to discuss the way in which a work was distributed to the wider world and the breadth of its reach. It captures print runs, comments about bestsellers, belated popularity, and also personal distribution by the author, presentation copies, etc. It has no mandatory or optional attributes or sub-elements.

CLASSISSUE is a significant sub-element in expressed, tag it as BIOGRAPHY > CULTURALFORMATION. It is used to discuss the significance of class in a person's life. In conjunction with the CLASS element, CLASSISSUE allows us to capture nuanced material about how the socio-economic conditions of her family and herself affected her life and writing. We understand that class is a shifting category and that a person's class position changes over the course of her life, for example on marriage. We also understand that class categories are historically and culturally specific. The CLASSISSUE element is meant to capture discussions of these complexities and allow for the historical and biographical specificities of one's relation to class. Within CLASSISSUE, you can if you need to access any of the other subelements appropriate to the discussion of CULTURALFORMATION: CLASS, DENOMINATION, ETHNICITY, GENDER, GEOGHERRITAGE, LANGUAGE, NATIONALHERRITAGE, NATIONALITY, POLITICALAFFILIATION, RACECOLOUR, and SEXUALIDENTITY.

An optional sub-element in BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION, it identifies significant friends, schoolfellows, or important contacts formed during any phase or mode of an author’s education.

CONTESTEDBEHAVIOUR is located in BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION. It records instances of significant actions or behaviour in school which was frowned on. This element particularly tracks young women's rebelliousness in the face of restrictive educational institutions. It is placed around the complete sentence(s) describing the behaviour.

PCONTRACT belongs to WRITING > PRODUCTION. It captures descriptions (a phrase or sentence or more) of the formal or informal agreement between a writer and a publisher. It also takes in anything about written agreements around publication, film and translation rights, royalties, etc. Often used within the tag PRELATIONSWITHPUBLISHER. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

This element is located in WRITING > PRODUCTION. It captures all information about the nature of the copyright of the text and the relationship of the text to copyright. It encloses a phrase or sentence. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

CULTURALFORMATION, in the BIOGRAPHY section of entries, is one of the 16 major DIV1 content elements defined as integral to mapping a woman's life. It is generally the next element after the BIRTH tag. It refers to the constitution of a British Woman Writer's subjectivity. It can either enclose a general overview of her identity positions or can act as the bucket that holds comment on the more specific elements of RELIGION, CLASS, GENDER, SEXUALITY, RACEANDETHNICITY, and NATIONALITY. This element addresses the imbrication of the triad race/class/gender. We aim to provide our users with two ways of accessing information around issues of a writer's subject positioning. Placing the identifying category elements around her religious denomination (Quaker), sexual identity (lesbian), or nationality (Scottish), for example, will point our end users toward writers whom they may be interested in researching (for example, Contemporary Scottish women's writing). Placing a larger discussion within one of the general sub-elements (CLASSISSUE, RELIGION, etc.) will allow us to extract and compare all significant discussions of certain issues, providing our end users with a complex weave of information through which to analyse the construction of subjectivity.

Relationships

CULTURALFORMATION has two levels of sub-elements. The first set contains the following anchored sub-elements (placed around discussion of issues) which in turn have their own subject-specific sub-elements. The first set includes CLASSISSUE, GENDERISSUE, NATIONALITYISSUE, RACEANDETHNICITY, RELIGION, and SEXUALITY. Whether or not any sub-element from this first set is selected, the following second set of sub-elements is available (placed around the identifying word or phrase): RACECOLOUR, GENDERIDENTITY, CLASS, NATIONALHERITAGE, NATIONALITY, GEOGHERRITAGE, ETHNICITY, DENOMINATION, LANGUAGE, POLITICALAFFILIATION, SEXUALIDENTITY.

Date is one of three elements, along with dateRange and dateStruct, used to systematize the capture of dates across project documents. Date is used to tag all singular dates (not ranges) for which all components (day, month, year) have a common degree of certainty. 

Global element for recording stretches of time; can be used everywhere where it is possible to type text (paragraphs, CHRONSTRUCT, CHRONPROSE). Every CHRONSTRUCT requires either DATE, DATERANGE, or DATESTRUCT. Through use of the CERTAINTY attribute DATERANGE can define a certain span (of a journey, a lecture course etc.) or an uncertain point in a span. It contains only the text that is pertinent to expressing the range of dates at hand. It has attributes CALENDAR, CERTAINTY, TO, FROM, and EXACT. The three last attributes combine to perform the same function that the VALUE attribute performs in DATE and DATESTRUCT subelements.

DATESTRUCT is one of three global elements, along with DATERANGE and DATE, used all across the textbase in places. (One of the three is mandatory in every CHRONSTRUCT.) DATESTRUCT is used to tag all singular dates (not ranges) for which individual components (day, month, year) have varying degrees of certainty or for which only a general season is known. It contains only the text that is pertinent to expressing the date at hand. It is modified by the VALUE and CERTAINTY attributes. The sub-elements of DATESTRUCT are DAY, MONTH, YEAR, and SEASON.

DEATH is one of the 16 major content elements defined as integral to mapping a woman's life in the Biography sections of entries. Where possible it captures information concerning the date, place, and cause of a writer's death. (Its single sub-element is CAUSE.)  For most biographies, except those whose subjects are still alive, the DEATH element will be the last DIV1 content element. (Occasionally it might be followed by posthumous information another DIV1 on FAMILY or WEALTH.) In all but a very few cases it will include a CHRONSTRUCT for the person's death date. 

This element can be found in WRITING > PRODUCTION. It is used to indicate a dedication of a work. It includes name where possible, and sometimes quote; has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

This sub-element is found in BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION. It captures all degrees (BA, MA, PhD), diplomas, certificates, etc. received by the entry subject. It goes around the name of the degree, and has one optional attribute, REG, which expresses the degree in a standard way. (Oxford gives a D.Phil. where others give a PhD, which would be the REG form.)

This sub-element can be found in BIOGRAPHY > CULTURALFORMATION. It is specifically grouped with the larger RELIGION sub-element. Used to capture the names of religious beliefs and denominations associated with a person's life, we are defining DENOMINATION very broadly to include a wide range of categories from Christian to atheist to Buddhist to Seekers to Clapham Sect. While we recognize that many of the denominations listed below are conceptually different (for example, Buddhism is on a different hierarchical, conceptual level from Calvinist), for the purposes of this Project we are overlooking these distinctions.

This element goes around the name of the denomination. The tag has optional attributes of CURRENTALTERNATIVETERM, SELF-DEFINED, and REG, which expresses the denomination in a standard form.

This term is belongs conceptually to WRITING > RECEPTION. marks a work destroyed by the author or others. It can include actual destruction, or requests for or threats of destruction whether or not they were carried out. It can also be used for incomplete destruction, in which part of a work, or a particular copy, was expunged; it encompasses book-burning or requests to destroy a manuscript after the author’s death. This element, which should contain a full sentence, has an optional attribute, DESTROYEDBY, with values of self and other.

This sub-element can be found in BIOGRAPHY > FAMILY. Aside from the FAMILY tag, it is also found in MARRIAGE. It includes a statement, not just the word divorce. SEPARATION is used when she was separated without a legal divorce. Appearance of the DIVORCE element in a biography document will signify that the subject of the biography was divorced: the element is not used for a divorce between her parents or others.