5.1 Global Tags

These tags apply to the entire text. In COCOA-encoded texts, they are placed at the start of the file and never recur. They become important normally only when texts are grouped into large databases.

5.1.1 SGML Global Tags

The <teiHeader> tag, at the top of the hierarchy of header tags, encloses four tags in the following order: <fileDesc>, <encodingDesc>, <profileDesc>, and <revisionDesc>. These describe the computer file (i.e., the electronic text itself), explain the tagging system, provide information for a standard library classification, and indicate the history of revisions to the text, from the start of the editorial process through however many recensions the text has been. Each of the four tags contains further tags within it. The following scheme is directly indebted to TEI P3, the final version of the published guidelines, but only has a selection of the possible tags in a TEI header. This selection represents the TEI-"recommended" header, "adequate to most bibliographic purposes, in particular to allow for the creation of an AACR2-conformant bibliographic record" (p. 135), with such additional information appropriate for Renaissance texts.

See Appendix 1 for the recommended TEI header.

5.1.2 COCOA Global Tags

Here are the global tags for most RET texts: 
TYPE OF TAG            VARIABLE NAME      SAMPLE VALUE

abbreviated source    source            3RB3.155
ascription            ascribedby        John Griffiths
author's gender       gender            m
author's name         author            Sir Philip Sidney
birth and death       lifedates         1564-1616
book title            title             Defense of Poesie
copy no. in edition   copyno            564
date of composition   datecomp          ca. 1579-80
date of publication   datepub           1595
e-text publ. date     edate             March 1994
e-text editor         eeditor           T. R. Wooldridge
e-text publ. place    eplacepub         CCH. Toronto
e-text series         eseries           RET2
genre                 genre             tragedy
IMEV No.              IMEV              148
library               library           British Library
period                period            Renaissance
publ. place           placepub          London
printer's name        printer           T. Creed
publisher's name      publisher         William Ponsonby
shelfmark             shelfmark         C.57.b.38
short-title           stitle            DP
source publ. date     sourcedatepub     1965
source edition title  sourcetitle       Tottel's Miscellany
source editor         sourceeditor      Hyder Edward Rollins
source library        sourcelibrary     Fisher Library
source publ. place    sourceplacepub    Cambridge, MA
source printer        sourceprinter     Wynken de Worde
source publisher      sourcepub         Harvard University Press
source shelfmark      sourceshelfmark   stc
STC No.               STC               22535
Wing No.              Wing              B 4357
Note that some of these tags may appear to be used later in the text. For example, you might find Shakespeare quoted in a Ben Jonson's Timber, but quotations are not the same as text. See <qauthor> under feature tags below.

The STC tag is a number in A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1475-1640, and the Wing tag a number in its successor. The IMEV tag is a number in Carleton Brown and Rossell H. Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse (1943), supplemented by Rossell H. Robbins and John L. Cutler (1965).