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Opening and Closing Quotation Marks for Direct Style

The tagging of text in quotation marks is a problem, as they often bypass the nesting hierarchy of the tags in which they need to be inserted. For example, when a character's speech is included in an epic text, which usually takes up more than one line, or begins in the middle of one line and ends in the middle of another.

Although there are several tags in the TEI which indicate not only where quotation marks begin and end, but also the meaning of the quoted text (if it is a literal quotation, if it is a bibliographical quotation, if the inverted commas are for emphasis, if it reproduces a direct style, etc.), we are not going to use any of them, since most of the time our quotation marks will serve simply to indicate direct style within structures which do not contain such a style throughout.

We will therefore insert the opening or closing quotation marks directly at the required point in the text using the <g/> (glyph"glyph" or "character" tag, with the @ref attribute pointing to the declaration of the glyph type in question. The list of glyphs we use in our editions appears in the <charDecl> of the <encodingDesc>, and is the same for all texts (cf. <encodingDesc>).

The <g/> tag does not have a node, and its content is indicated through the attribute @refWe include the following options:

  • <g ref="#laquo"/> left angle quotes.
  • <g ref="#raquo"/> right angle quotes.
  • <g ref="#lsquo"/> left single quote.
  • <g ref="#rsquo"/> right single quote.
  • <g ref="#ldquo"/> left double quotes.
  • <g ref="#rdquo"/> right double quotes.

The main quotation marks in our editions will always be double angular quotes, which are traditional for Spanish and Latin and necessary for Greek. Only in the case of having to put a text in quotation marks within another text will we use single quotation marks (double ones in the case of Greek, so as not to confuse them with apostrophes or breathings). In translations into modern languages, we will use the corresponding ones according to the language (cf. Quotation Marks en Wikipedia).

Thus, an epic text, for example, which contains the speech of a character, would be tagged as follows:

<l n="447">Vix ea, cum mixto clamore obliqua tuentes</l>
<l n="448">incipiunt una: <g ref="#laquo"/>Rex o mitissime Achiuum,</l>
<l n="449">quid uerbis opus? Ipse undantis sanguine uultus</l>
<l n="450">aspicis?<g ref="#raquo"/> Haec passim turbatis uocis amarae</l>
<l n="451">confudere sonis; inde orsus in ordine Tydeus</l>
<l n="452">continuat: <g ref="#laquo"/>Maesti cupiens solacia casus</l>
<l n="453">monstriferae Calydonis opes Acheloiaque arua</l>
<l n="454">deserui; uestris haec me ecce in finibus ingens</l>
<l n="455">nox operit. Tecto caelum prohibere quis iste</l>
<l n="456">arcuit? An quoniam prior haec ad limina forte</l>
<l n="457">molitus gressus? Pariter stabulare bimembres</l>
<l n="458">Centauros unaque ferunt Cyclopas in Aetna</l>
<l n="459">compositos. Sunt et rabidis iura insita monstris</l>
<l n="460">fasque suum: nobis sociare cubilia terrae…</l>
<l n="461">Sed quid ego? Aut hodie spoliis gauisus abibis,</l>
<l n="462">quisquis es. His, aut me, si non effetus oborto</l>
<l n="463">sanguis hebet luctu, magni de stirpe creatum</l>
<l n="464">Oeneos et Marti non degenerare paterno</l>
<l n="465">accipies<g ref="#raquo"/>. <g ref="#laquo"/>Nec nos animi nec stirpis egentes…<g ref="#raquo"/>.</l>
<l n="466">ille refert contra, sed mens sibi conscia fati</l>

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