Master Encoding Guide: Title

Record Content: Title Element

If there is no clearly defined "author to recipient" statement, the second line under the date should be tagged as a title, <ti>. To conform to the RelaxNG schema, there should always be either an AUTHOR and/or a TITLE present in each record.

<title>
As with the author and recipient elements, a title element may include child elements for <person>, <corporate>, and <office>, all with target attributes to separate directories. As with the recipient element, a title element may also include optional child elements for <enclosure>, <content>, and <ref> elements. The <ref> element includes a @target.

Example:

<title> Letter of credence from Congress <person target="huntingtonsamuel">(Samuel Huntington</person>, <office target="presidentofcon">President)</office> to the <office target="stadtholder">Stadtholder of the Netherlands.</office></title>

<legaltitle><docket>
A child element unique to <title> is the <legaltitle> element. Within <legaltitle> there is another child element, <docket>.

Example:

<title> <legaltitle>Minutes on court cases: <docket>J[oshua] Green, Admr. v. G[eorge] Green</docket> <docket>Malcom v. Mackay</docket> </legaltitle> </title>

Encoding Guide. Title

Record: TITLE
Most records represent correspondence and have an author and recipient. Sometimes, a record represents a unique document with an author followed by a period and a title. The key indicator to whether a title is present is the absence of the word “to.” Any text on the second line that cannot be clearly separated into either the author or recipient categories should be coded with the title tag, <ti>.

<ti>Declaration of Independence</ti>

<ti>An Elegy</ti>

<ti>Letters from Publicola</ti>

If a name (or initials) are present, followed by a period “.” this can be transcribed as an author of the following title statement. For example, “John Laurens. Memorandum of Agreement between John Laurens and Alexander Gillon, with certification by Thomas Paine” should be separated and tagged as:

<a>John Laurens.</a>
<ti> Memorandum of Agreement between John Laurens and Alexander Gillon, with certification by Thomas Paine</ti>

If there is any confusion in identifying an author with a title, simply tag the entire statement with <ti> tags.