Tagging Guidelines and Documentation

These guidelines describe how to mark up the text of a charm in Romanian and in English, in order to enter it into the text fields of the Romanian Love Charms database. The markup is based on the features of the charms that have already been entered into the online database. If new requirements arise, the markup and the elements used to indicate it may be supplemented or changed.

See the DTD described in these guidelines.

Markup Syntax

In order for charms to display correctly, it is important to use the XML elements exactly as they are described in this document. Spelling and capitalization of element and attribute names are important, as is the use of brackets, slashes and quotation marks. Finally, the order and nesting of elements has to be observed.

An element is demarcated by a start tag and an end tag which surround the element text. Tags are identifiable because they are enclosed in angle brackets (<..>). The start tag looks like this <tag> and the end tag like this </tag>. This means that you cannot use angle brackets for purposes other than to mark a tag. A special notation exists if it is necessary for angle brackets to appear as part of the text: &lt; stands for < and &gt; stands for >.

Elements have attributes that provide additional information. For example, it may be useful to indicate the number of a note, or the language of a word or phrase. Attributes appear in the start tag, they are not repeated on the end tag.

<tag id="02"> ... </tag>
<tag n="red"> ... </tag>

An element can contain another element, but it cannot overlap with another element. For example, this is allowed:

<verse>
<l>...</l>
<l>...</l>
</verse>

but this is incorrect:

<verse>
<l>...</verse>
...
</l>

The Text of a Charm in Romanian

The text of a charm is marked up with a <charmText> element, and consists primarily of verses and techniques.

Verses, the spoken part of a charm, are enclosed in <VR> elements. Inside a <VR> element, there is most often a series of line <l> elements.

<charmText>
<VR n="1">
<l>...<N id="01" /></l>
<l>...</l>
...
</VR>
</charmText>

Each <VR> element has an n attribute, the value of which is the sequential number of the verse component within the charm. Thus, the first <VR> in a charm has an n attribute with a value of 1, the second has a value of 2 and so on. <VR n="1">...</VR>

Additional elements that can appear inside an <l> element:

• <N> The <N> element is simply a marker indicating the presence of a note, and always has an id attribute whose number corresponds to the id attribute of the <NOTE> element contains the text of the note. <N> elements should be placed right after the word or phrase that is being annotated, and should be numbered sequentially within a charm; the first one is <N id="01" />, the next one is <N id="02" />, and so on. <N> elements should always be inside an <l> element. The syntax of the <N> element is special, because it has an attribute only, and no textual content.
• <term> is used to indicate a special word, usually one that is under discussion. This element is usually rendered in italics. In general, these are words in Romanian, or words of linguistic interest. <term> appears most often in English translations and notes.

Techniques, the descriptions of actions accompanying a charm, are contained in the <TR> element. All text inside a <TR> element is contained in paragraph <p> elements. If there is a note, it should be marked using the <N> element. <N> elements should always appear inside a <p> element. Otherwise, <N> behave in Techniques just as they do in Verse.

<TR n="1">
<p>...<N id="01" /></p>
<p>...</p>
...
</TR>

Each <TR> element has an n attribute, the value of which is the sequential number of the verse component within the charm. Thus, the first <TR> in a charm has an n attribute with a value of 1, the second has a value of 2 and so on.

Additional elements that can appear inside a <p> element:

• <term> is used to indicate a special word, usually one that is under discussion. This element is usually rendered in italics.
• <q> is used to mark off a special word or phrase or quoted text. It appears in quotes. <q> elements can nest.
• <F> is used to mark a formula. It is not generally displayed differently, but can be used to collect all formulas that appear in the corpus.
• Sometimes there are lines of verse inside a techniqe. These are surrounded with the <verse> element, and marked with lines <l>. <verse> elements appear inside <p> elements.

  <TR n="1">
  <p>...</p>
  <p>
  ...
  <verse>
  <l>...</l>
  <l>...</l>
  </verse>
  </p>
  </TR>

Some charms are not collected directly from informants, but are described second hand, or are derived from songs. These charms are not marked with <VR> and <TR>. Instead, songs are marked with <SR> and narrative paragraphs are marked with <NR>. Songs and narrative paragraphs contain paragraphs (<p> elements).

Entering a Charm in English

Charms in English are marked up identically to charms in Romanian with the following few differences:

• The verse of the charm is surrounded by a <VE> element.
• The technique of a charm is surrounded by a <TE> element.
• Narrative paragraphs are surrounded by a <NE> element.
• Songs are surrounded by a <SE> element.

Elements are numbered in the same way, and <N> elements follow the same rules as in Romanian. Lines, paragraphs and all other elements that are inside these elements are the same as in Romanian.

Note

Note text appears after the <charmText> element, as a series of <NOTE> elements. The <NOTE> element always has an id attribute <NOTE id="01">, where the number of the id attribute corresponds to the number of the id attribute of the <N> marker. All text within a note is enclosed in paragraph <p> elements. The <p> elements can contain <q>, <term>, and <verse> elements, just as the paragraphs in a technique do. They may not, however, contain any <N> elements, since there should be no note markers within notes.

<charmText>
(verses and techniques)
</charmText>
<NOTE id="01">...</NOTE>
<NOTE id="02">...</NOTE>
<NOTE id="03">...</NOTE>

<NOTE id="01">
<p>...</p>
<p>...<q>...</q> </p>
<p>
...
<verse>
<l>...</l>
<l>...</l>
</verse>
...
</p>
</NOTE>