Internet Shakespeare Editions

3. Preparation of the Folio/Quarto Editions

3.1. The purpose of the folio/quarto texts

Diplomatic transcriptions of the Folio and quarto texts will be made available for critics, to provide a quick and accurate check on the original spelling and punctuation in HTML format on the Web, and for textual and analytical scholars to provide base texts in XML that can be indexed and examined, or in turn be tagged more "deeply" to provide additional information. In the transcription of the early texts, you should keep all original errors, reporting them in your Collation.

3.2. Tagging the early texts

In order to simplify the complex business of working with XML (powerful but verbose as a language), you will work with a special set of tags that are in effect an extension of some basic HTML tags, designed to be reasonably intuitive. Once inserted, these tags can then be analyzed automatically, and can be used to create both HTML and XML versions of the texts. The tags to be employed are listed in the Appendix (section 1).

You will be provided with "base" texts with much of the tagging in place.

3.3. Publication of the folio/quarto texts

The early texts can be published independently as they are completed. You are expected to complete your work on them before beginning work on the modern text, since the exercise of proofreading and completing the transcription is likely to offer insight into some of the textual problems the play presents.

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