Lines

Epigraphic lines

EpiDoc follows TEI practice in marking line breaks on the support (as opposed to verse lines) using the <lb> (line-breakGB 2007-05-23: though I use the expansion "line-begins" when presenting this to students) empty element to mark the point at which the line breaks.

Because there is no containing element encapsulating lines, any information about the numbering, rendition, or condition of an entire line need to be marked in an attribute on the preceeding <lb>. For this reason, therefore, it is our convention to place an <lb> at the beginning of every epigraphic line in the edition, including the first. Any rend or numbering attributes on that <lb> refer to all text between the current at the following line-break. (See example 1 below.)

An <lb> that occurs mid-word should be given an attribute type="worddiv" (this, among other things, generates the hyphen at the end of the preceding line in XSLT).

See also direction of text.

Verse lines

In addition to marking epigraphic lines, which is obligatory in any case, an editor may choose to tag verse groups and lines using the TEI <lg> (line-group) and <l> (line) elements. Within the verse lines, however, the start of each line of text on the support still needs to be marked with an <lb> element. In other words, <lg> and <l> are replacing the containing <ab>, but not the <lb>s. (See example 3 below.)

See also verse inscriptions.