The Structure of a TEI Text

All TEI-conformant texts contain (a) a TEI header (marked up as a <teiHeader> element) and (b) the transcription of the text proper (marked up as a <text> element).

The TEI header provides information analogous to that provided by the title page of a printed text. It has up to four parts: a bibliographic description of the machine-readable text, a description of the way it has been encoded, a non-bibliographic description of the text (a text profile), and a revision history. The header is described in more detail in section 20. The Electronic Title Page.

A TEI text may be unitary (a single work) or composite (a collection of single works, such as an anthology). In either case, the text may have an optional front or back. In between is the body of the text, which, in the case of a composite text, may consist of groups, each containing more groups or texts.

A unitary text will be encoded using an overall structure like this:

<TEI.2>
    <teiHeader> [ TEI Header information ]  </teiHeader>
    <text>
        <front> [ front matter ... ]   </front>
        <body>  [ body of text ... ]   </body>
        <back>  [ back matter ...  ]   </back>
    </text>
</TEI.2>

A composite text also has an optional front and back. In between occur one or more groups of texts, each with its own optional front and back matter. A composite text will thus be encoded using an overall structure like this:

<TEI.2>
    <teiHeader> [ header information for the composite ] </teiHeader>
    <text>
        <front> [ front matter for the composite  ]      </front>
        <group>
           <text>
              <front> [ front matter of first text ] </front>
              <body>  [ body of first text  ]          </body>
              <back>  [ back matter of first text ]    </back>
           </text>
           <text>
              <front> [ front matter of second text]  </front>
              <body>  [ body of second text  ]          </body>
              <back>  [ back matter of second text ]    </back>
           </text>
           [ more texts or groups of texts here ]
        </group>
        <back>      [ back matter for the composite  ]      </back>
    </text>
</TEI.2>

It is also possible to define a composite of TEI texts, each with its own header. Such a collection is known as a TEI corpus, and may itself have a header:

<teiCorpus>
  <teiHeader>   [header information for the corpus]</teiHeader>
  <TEI.2>
     <teiHeader>[header information for first text]</teiHeader>
     <text>     [first text in corpus]             </text>
  </TEI.2>
  <TEI.2>
    <teiHeader>[header information for second text]</teiHeader>
    <text>     [second text in corpus]             </text>
  </TEI.2>
</teiCorpus>

It is not however possible to create a composite of corpora -- that is, a number of <teiCorpus> elements combined together and treated as a single object. This is a restriction of the current version of the TEI Guidelines.

In the remainder of this document, we discuss chiefly simple text structures. The discussion in each case consists of a short list of relevant TEI elements with a brief definition of each, followed by definitions for any attributes specific to that element. In most cases, short examples are also given.

Up: Contents Previous: 2. A Short Example Next: 4. Encoding the Body

Date: (revised October 2004) Author: Lou Burnard (revised SPQR).
Copyright TEI 1995

Text Encoding Initiative

3. The Structure of a TEI Text