Tag Glossary

This term that is closely related to and often placed within the Recognitions element belongs conceptually within WRITING > RECEPTION. It supplies the name of a particular award or prize given to an author. Generally encloses one or two words, the name of an award, but can enclose more words, e.g. short-listed for or runner-up to. The REG attribute offers a way to chart the changes of name often undergone by awards, like the Bailey’s Prize / the Orange Prize for Women’s Writing. This element has no mandatory or optional sub-elements.

This element is often used with RECOGNITIONS WRITING > RECEPTION. It defines the numeric or non-monetary value of the recognition given for literary work. Generally encloses just a named sum, the amount of a literary prize, but its contents can be longer if a scholarship or travel grant is involved. This element has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

This tag is associated with WRITING > RECEPTION. It encloses information about literary awards and prizes, and such marks of honour as statues, plaques, or things named after an author. The title of the award may be captured in RRECOGNITIONNAME, its value in monetary or numerical terms in RRECOGNITIONVALUE. There are no other mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes for RRECOGNITIONS.

REGION, a globally available sub-element of PLACE, captures the name of the place only and excludes all punctuation. It must be followed by a GEOG tag (except in cases where a REGION straddles more than one GEOG), and has optional attributes CURRENT and REG. It captures the following geographical and political units:

• Political regions (counties) of the British Isles: Cornwall, Durham, Hampshire
• Political regions (provinces or states) of other countries: Alberta, Madras, California
• Topographical features: all mountain ranges, individual mountains, islands (when not nation states), valleys, forests, etc.
• Bodies of Water (including oceans, rivers, lakes): Lake Simcoe, English Channel, Nile, Atlantic Ocean.
• Geographical regions: Lake District, Scottish Highlands, Welsh border, Tibetan border.

This tag belongs within WRITING > PRODUCTION. It is designed to capture the mainly professional relationship between a writer and her publisher (or, in the case of dramatists, her producer). Encloses a sentence or more: a detailed account of a 50-year relationship or the briefest summary. Publisher includes literary agent, theatre producer, etc. There are no mandatory sub-elements for this element, but if possible the publisher's NAME or ORGNAME is tagged. An optional attribute, RELATIONSHIPTYPE, designates whether the relationship was personal or professional.

RELIGION is one of the issues (along with SEXUALITY, RACEANDETHNICITY, LANGUAGE, CLASS, and NATIONALITY) we have defined as significant in discussing the CULTURALFORMATION of a writer (in the BIOGRAPHY section of her entry). This DIV1 content element captures discussions of her RELIGION as an identity, as an issue in her life and her religious beliefs and affiliations; it makes a space to elaborate on the basic, defining DENOMINATION with attention to the significance in a life of belief or of seeking belief. We are interested in the effect of a religious upbringing on a woman writer and emphasize the inclusion of her family's DENOMINATION in a CULTURALFORMATION element, sometimes also within a RELIGION element to capture discussion or elaboration, whether or not she practised that religion for her life. We are interested in women's relationships with institutions and therefore wish to capture in this element information regarding religious institutions. We are also interested in the crucial role religious movements have had in women's writing, particularly in the early modern periods: users will wish to be able to trace the influence of Quakerism, for example, on women's writing and lives.

The related content sub-element DENOMINATION can be used without the RELIGION element, just as the other sub-elements appropriate to the discussion of cultural formation - CLASS, ETHNICITY, GENDER, GEOGHERITAGE, LANGUAGE, NATIONALHERITAGE, NATIONALITY, POLITICALAFFILIATION, RACECOLOUR, and SEXUALIDENTITY, can be used with or without a broader sub-element (CLASSISSUE etc.).

This sub-element is found within BIOGRAPHY > PERSONNAME. It captures all names a person acquired through religion: for example, her name change on entering a convent or a name she used for religious reasons, or the Pope taking a new name on being elected Pope, or Lady Lucy Herbert taking the religious name Sister Teresa Joseph. It has attributes for REG and WROTEORPUBLISHEDAS.

This sub-element is found within BIOGRAPHY > PERSONNAME. It captures all names a person acquired through religion. For example, her name change on entering a convent or a name she used for religious reasons, or the Pope taking a new name on being elected Pope. BWW Lady Lucy Herbert took the religious name Sister Teresa Joseph. This tag goes inside a DATAITEM and encloses just a name, not prose. It has attributes for REG and WROTEORPUBLISHEDAS.This sub-element, available only within BIOGRAPHY > OCCUPATION, captures statements about non-literary earnings, whether exact (her salary rose over five years from x to x) or general (she said that scrubbing floors would have been better paid).

This element, available in WRITING > RECEPTION addresses reactions to the literary work, the oeuvre in general, or the writer's role as an author/artist. It should enclose a whole sentence or more. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements, but three optional attributes: RESPONSETYPE, FORMALITY, and GENDEREDRESPONSE. RESPONSETYPE has the values of initial, recent, and re-evaluation. FORMALITY has the values of FORMAL and INFORMAL. GENDEREDRESPONSE has the values of GENDEREDYES GENDEREDNO and ADFEMINAM. In practice used mostly for reviews with attribute value FORMAL and for comment in letters etc. with attribute value INFORMAL. Generalizations (reviews were overwhelmingly favourable) can be used as well as more specific info. A single use of this tag can encompass several distinct or contradictory opinions, so long as the attribute values are the same.

ROYAL is a sub-tag in BIOGRAPHY  > PERSONNAME. It refers to names, such as Queen or Princess, which a person has because of their royal status. This element does not capture information about noble titles in general (cf. titled) but includes specifically royal names, e.g. Queen Elizabeth I. It has optional attributes of REG and WROTEORPUBLISHEDAS.

SCHOLARNOTE is a content tag available throughout the system, in BIOGRAPHY or WRITING documents, free-standing EVENTS, and in BIBLIOGRAPHY. The element contains further information of a specialized or scholarly nature that is removed to a note in order not to interrupt the flow of the entry. 

This content sub-element, available only within BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION, can record either the specific name or a description of an educational institution. Its attributes are REG, INSTITUTION (capturing type of school), INSTITUTIONLEVEL (from primary to post-secondary), RELIGIOUS (to identify schools teaching a particular faith), and STUDENTBODY (with attributes CO-ED and SINGLESEX). Encloses name of institution (Ilminster Grammar School; St Anne’s College,, Oxford University) or description if no name is available (a convent school, a short-lived typing school). May be used in combination with ORGNAME for institutions prominent enough to be potentially named elsewhere in the system, but not for those unlikely ever to be mentioned again (Miss Brodie’s Academy for Young Ladies).

Attribute REG on SCHOOL expresses the name of the school in a standard form if not done in the prose, and is useful for long-established schools that have changed their names. Colleges at collegiate universities take college name, double comma, university name (Trinity College,, University of Toronto). A few ancient universities named for places take the form without of: Oxford University.

SELFCONSTRUCTED is a sub-element within BIOGRAPHY > PERSONNAME to capture names which a person chooses to use in her everyday life, not only as her PSEUDONYM. As the element name suggests, these are names she applies to herself and, for example, writes on her cheques as well as signs her books with. Whereas a PSEUDONYM applies to a particular text or group of texts, SELFCONSTRUCTED signifies a name a writer elected to live by, like Maya Angelou or Hilary Mantel. It has optional attributes for NAMESIGNIFIER, REG, and WROTEORPUBLISHEDAS.

SELFDESCRIPTION, a sub-element belonging to WRITING > RECEPTION, encloses a statement, an analysis or evaluation by an author of her own work. It’s sometimes a judgement call between use of this tag and PATTITUDES. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

Sub-tag available in BIOGRAPHY > FAMILY, but only within MARRIAGE. SEPARATION captures information concerning the marital conditions of the subject. This element is used to indicate that a woman separated legally or officially from her partner without a divorce. (Sometimes the DIVORCE tag may be used later for the same relationship.)

This element belongs to WRITING > PRODUCTION. It encloses a statement about (see attributes) either sections of a book appearing sequentially in a newspaper or magazine, or gradual publication, one section or one volume at a time. It has one optional attribute attached, FORMOFSERIALIZATION with values of VOLUMEFORM and PERIODICALFORM.

This element in WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES captures the time in which a fictional story is set relative to the writer's time, not the reader's. It should contain a statement, which may include a specific date like 1789, or general description, such as in the future, or should relate to a recognizable event like after the First World War. N.b. used for works of fiction (including drama and poetry) only, not for history, biography, or travel writing. Has no mandatory or optional sub-elements, but one optional attribute, SETTINGDATETYPE, with values of PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE, and AMBIGUOUS. 

TSETTINGPLACE, belonging conceptually to WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES, addresses the real or imaginary place in which a fictional (not a factual) text is set. Encloses statement, with a tagged PLACE (or several) included if possible. This element has no mandatory or optional sub-elements but has two optional attributes, SETTINGCLASS and SETTINGPLACETYPE. SettingClass has values of upperClass, workingClass, middleClass, and wideRange (recognizing the separate existence of, e.g., both well-heeled London and squalid underbelly London). The attribute TSETTINGPLACETYPE has the values fictive, real, and identifiable. TSETTINGPLACE can be used twice of the same text, with different SettingPlaceType attribute values, in the case of e.g. an imaginary house set at an actual address.

Settlement, a sub-element of PLACE available everywhere in Orlando, captures the names of cities, towns, villages, hamlets and areas within larger settlements (for example, districts of London). It encloses just the name of the place, without punctuation. Settlement has optional attributes for Current and Reg. For districts of London or other large cities Current attribute is used for city name and Reg for district name. We need to provide for search results that will deliver *either* London *or* Chelsea, *either* New York *or* Manhattan, and using both attributes is so far the only way to achieve this.

This element captures one word or phrase identifications of sexuality (i.e., "lesbian," "monogamous," "heterosexual") and from this information we will be able to point our reader towards women writers whom they may be interested in studying in a critical analysis of these identifications. Capturing the term "lesbian" in a sexualIdentity tag does not signify that the subject of the biography was a lesbian; such identifications are often impossible for reasons of historical gaps and silences. It does suggest to our readers that if they are interested in studying lesbian issues, they may wish to look at this particular writer. We assume that sexual identity does not function in an essentialist manner and that to act monogomously does not reflect an essential, ontological state of being. But we are also assuming that issues of sexual identity influence a woman's relationship to her writing and to her life and therefore, we emphasize the importance of capturing this information in a systematic way.

Sexuality is one of the issues (along with religion, race and ethnicity, language, class, and nationality) we have defined as significant in discussing the cultural formation of a woman. This element captures discussions of her sexuality as an identity or as an issue in her life. It is not meant to capture individual sexual experiences and relationships (see intimateRelationships). We are attempting, within this element to gesture towards some of the complicated issues around sexuality, for example, the politics of outing, the historical specificity of some categories such as "congenital invert," or the multiple forms of relating to one's own sexuality. Capturing discussions of her sexuality within this element, will help researchers interested in the historical, ideological and gendered constructions of sexuality.

This element has to do with the author's influence on other writers, other women writers, other women, the literary tradition, and society as a whole. 

This element captures all unpaid work, volunteer work, or other significant activity that a person was engaged in. We hope to counter the ideological assumption which does not recognize women's unpaid work as work; for example, parenting and unpaid domestic labour are not included when the International Monetary Fund calculates the gross national product of a country. We hope to counter this ideological assumption by emphasizing the need to systematically capture women's exclusion from the paid workforce and their participation in the unpaid workforce.

Styled is a sub-element within BIOGRAPHY > PERSONNAME, that refers to titles which are called courtesy titles. For example, peers’ eldest sons (and their wives) often possess a title by virtue of their temporary position as heir. Titles of this kind do not give a seat in the House of Lords. Styled is used for all those people whose title results from their father's title, e.g. Lady Mary, Lady Jane, Lady Florence Dixie, as opposed to Lady Smith and Lady Jones. This tag has attributes REG (in case of variant spelling) and WROTEORPUBLISHEDASYES.

I.e. subject of study. This content sub-element in BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION, generally encloses a word or phrase, and records areas of study which are significant to a writer's education. It has one attribute, REG, to explain non-standard terms (<SUBJECT REG="HISTORY”>kings and queens of England</>). We are particularly interested in subjects which influenced her writing (for example, she studied archeology and her first novel was set at an archeological dig), classical language studies for women writers in the early period (recording the importance of ancient languages as a masculine domain, and the acquisition of translation skills), and other subjects which were non-traditional for women (for example, engineering).

PSUMBMISSIONSREJECTIONS is a sub-tag belonging within WRITING > PRODUCTION. It holds information (at least one full sentence) about daring, significant, or turning-point submissions and about rejections of work by publishers. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

This sub-element of PERSONNAME, available only within BIOGRAPHY > BIRTHNAME, captures the last name of a person at birth. Within BIRTHNAME, it is placed last in Western usage, first in Chinese. It has one optional attribute, REG, for the rare instances when a surname has two different spellings. In this case the REG attribute supplies the proper form, and a SCHOLARNOTE should outline the discrepancy.

This tag withinWRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES encloses a statement not about a writer’s technique generally but about specific tools, as listed in available attribute values. Applies to the structural components and devices of language used to create literary effects. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements. One optional attribute, TECHNIQUETYPE, has values versification, non-standardenglish, DICTION, auraleffects, and imagery. For a fuller discussion of these values, see TECHNIQUETYPE.

Located within BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION, this tag records texts significant in educational development, early reading matter which exerted a formative influence, rather than even major influences on her writing, if encountered in maturity. Encloses generally just a title or author name, but can enclose a phrase, e.g. "Greek myth and legend," or "German fairy tales."

This has one optional attribute, REG which allows for the standardization of the name of the author or title of the book (either of which might be tagged as TEXT) when not done in the prose. Used for expanding or fully identifying either Name or Title: <TEXT REG="Eliot, George”>Eliot</TEXT>, <TEXT REG="The Mill on the Floss">Maggie Tulliver</TEXT>

Found in WRITING, this is one of three big-bucket tags with PRODUCTION and RECEPTION. Most of the same comments apply as on those tags, though TEXTUALFEATURES almost never includes CHRONSTRUCTs. This element addresses content and features of critical interest in texts and provides space for textual analysis/close readings as perceived by project members. No text is allowed directly within the TEXTUALFEATURES element; another element must be opened first. The optional elements most at home in TEXTUALFEATURES include: TCHARACTERIZATION, TCHARACTERTYPEROLE, TCHARACTERNAME, TGENRE, TGENREISSUE, TINTERTEXTUALITY, TMOTIF, TPLOT, TSETTINGDATE, TSETTINGPLACE, TTECHNIQUES, TTHEMETOPIC, TTONESTYLE, and TVOICENARRATION.

Belonging in WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES, THEMETOPIC is a very flexible tag. It has no controlled vocabulary associated with it, but can contain any information. It may enclose much more than a single word; it may record central themes, side issues in a text, or objects of observation or discussion. Place tags, for instance, often appear within TTHEMETOPIC tags in accounts of travel literature, and NAME tags within accounts of biography and criticism. (Accounts of place as it operates in fiction use a SETTINGPLACE tag.) This element applies to both theme and topic. Theme is the central idea in a text stated either directly or indirectly; topic applies to interesting subjects appearing in a work that might not aspire to the status of a "theme". The tag is useful in describing examples of genres such as educational or non-fictional texts. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.

Title is a core tag, available throughout the textbase. It encloses the title of a literary and other work of art: convention is that an exhibition or novel, etc, takes MONOGRAPHIC attribute, whereas a single painting or poem, etc, takes ANALYTIC. The TITLE element encloses the title of a work, whether article, book, journal (newspaper, magazine), series, or unpublished. Attributes are REG (to record standard form as given in bibliographic entity collection; also in case of misspelling in source), REND (which can over-ride the style sheet and display a title without italic or quotes), and TITLETYPE, which indicates whether the work is an article, book, journal, series, or unpublished material.

This element is found in BIOGRAPHY > CULTURALFORMATION. It is sometimes within CLASSISSUE. Unlike CLASSISSUE, which contains detailed discussion of her class position, CLASS is meant to capture an identifying word or phrase. From this element users can generate lists of women writers who were working-class, aristocratic, etc. It has optional attributes: SELFDEFINED and SOCIALRANK. The latter offers a range of values, allowing you to express class in a standard way.

This subtag is located in BIOGRAPHY > PERSONNAME. It captures titles of nobility, sometimes more than one held successively, by a woman in right of her husband or less commonly of herself. It has attributes for REG (used for variant spelling) and WROTEORPUBLISHEDAS (Yes or blank). Ranks are duchess, marchioness, countess, viscountess, Lady, and Dame. 

This element can be found in WRITING > TTEXTUALFEATURES. It contains a phrase or full sentence or more. It applies to the characteristic manner of expression; how a particular writer says things; the reflection of a writer's attitude, manner, mood, and moral outlook and the means of expressing that manner or mood. This tag encloses a statement of a far more undirected and general character than the contents of the TTECHNIQUES tag. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.