Encoding Guidelines

The Chesnutt Archive is experimenting with documenting our project's encoding guidelines in spreadsheet format, such that the encoding categories can be more easily sorted and organized by our project team. It is possible that we will change to or supplement with a more explanatory, narrative form of guide in the future. The project's current guidelines are still in development and can be found here; this document will be updated regularly.

The encoding of Chesnutt's galley proofs presented the Archive with a challenge, in that the current TEI guidelines do not offer standards for the encoding of printed page proofs with handwritten corrections. The project team therefore developed an encoding scheme for these materials using existing TEI elements, work which we hope can serve as a template for other projects and individuals looking to digitize such materials. Ashlyn Stewart, Brett Barney, and Kevin McMullen played an early and ongoing role in the development of these guidelines, with the input of graduate research assistants Christy Hyman and Samantha Gilmore, as well as the project co-editors. Because of the complexity of both the materials and the markup, the encoding guidelines for the galley proofs—including detailed explanations and examples—are documented separately from the other materials on the site, and can be viewed here.