Marginal elements

[cbeattie19]

If I have text in the margins I can see that I might tag it as <div type = "marginal comment"> but is there any tag that would help that text to be displayed in the right place when published?

[cbeattie19]

code disappears when I publish! without angle brackets it is div type="marginal comment"

[gabrielbodard]

If this text is added with the intention of being read as part of the main text (as opposed to a completely unrelated graffito or comment), then rather than <div> I would use <add place="margin"> or <add place="left"> or similar, and place it in your transcription precisely where it is meant to be read.

[cmohge1]

Marginal notes can be challenging for TEI encoding. We can discuss more on Friday, but marginal notes are typically impositions into the already existing text structure, so sometimes you run into xml structural problems (broken hierarchies). Most projects that I know of use <note> with @type="marginal" or "authorial" or something like that to tag marginal notes. E.g. (from the Walt Whitman Archive)

<note type="authorial" place="bottom" resp="#h2">
In
<add rend="insertion" place="supralinear">the geography of</add>
poetry there are only four
<lb/>
or five continents—the rest
<del rend="overstrike">
<unclear reason="deletion" resp="#lmg" cert="medium">,</unclear>
</del>
<lb/>
range among the plenteous archepelag
<lb/>
gos,—some large islands, and countless
<lb/>
little ones.—
</note>

But marginalia is harder to encode because of the cross-hierarchy issues. Here's one example of connecting two 'empty' elements (from Keats Library's edition of Milton's Paradise Lost):

<l>
Sing, heavenly Muse, that
<mod rend="su" spanTo="#kpl1.003.0007"/>
on the secret top
</l>
<l>
Of Oreb, or of Sinai,
<anchor xml:id="kpl1.003.0007"/>
didst inspire
</l>

This underlined text by Keats is represented with an empty <mod> element connecting (or spanning over via @spanTo) to the <anchor> with its corresponding @xml:id.

[cbeattie19]

Thanks. Yes, they function more as headings/description of more than one paragraph so the cross-hierarchy issues is the one to be dealt with. I will try <note>.

[gabrielbodard]

Are these marginal headings/descriptions semantically different than they would be if they were headings above the text in question? (Other than the place and possibly the author/scribe, say?)

If these are descriptions/comments added by a later hand, like scholia or similar, then I would agree with Christopher that <note>, perhaps with a pointer to the span of text they refer to, would be a good way to capture them.