AmVerse FAQ no. 9 : Footnotes and Endnotes

FOOTNOTES

Reasonably short notes associated with a point in the text should be placed (within <NOTE> tags) at the spot in the text with which they are associated. This rule covers the most common types of notes, including standard footnotes and marginal notes, including footnotes that run on to the next page, and some brief endnotes. Here is an example:

Mary* had a little lamb;
Its fleece was white as snow.
*Mary was the name of the author's mother.
should be recorded like this:
<L>Mary
<NOTE N="*">Mary was the name of the author's mother.
</NOTE> had a little lamb;
</L>
<L>Its fleece was white as snow.
</L>

FOOTNOTE "FLAG" CHARACTERS

Characters that link a note to a spot in the text should be removed from the note once they have served their purpose by locating the <NOTE> in the right place in the text. The corresponding character in the text itself should also be removed, but not completely: it should be preserved as the value of the "N" attribute of the <NOTE> tag, as in the example above, where the flag character is an asterisk (*), which therefore becomes the value of the N attribute <NOTE N="*">. Numbered footnotes will therefore look like this: <NOTE N="1">. Notes that use non-alphabetical symbols such as "daggers," section-marks, paragraph marks, etc., should preserve those characters too if possible, using character entities, like this: <NOTE N="&dagger;">. If the character is not recognized as corresponding to a readily available character entity, omit the N attribute for that note.

ENDNOTES

Notes that occupy a block of pages of their own should not be moved into the text. Instead, they should be left in place and treated as ordinary text, e.g. broken up into <DIV>s or <P>s as appropriate, like this (in this case using <P>):

<DIV1 TYPE="notes">
<HEAD>NOTES
</HEAD>
<P ID="note0001">
<I>Mary had a little lamb.
</I> This line evoked frequent imitation amongst the poets of the Nursery Revival (1860-1924). For examples see the extensive bibliography by Mudd (1978), updated by Nielsen (1992).
</P>
</DIV1>

If it is possible to locate the point in the text to which the note refers (e.g. by a note number, asterisk, line or stanza number, etc.), place a pointer in the text that points to the text of the appropriate note. Two tags are suitable for this purpose: <PTR> and <REF>. <REF> is used when there is a character or string of characters in the text which serves as the link. <REF> is then used like the <A HREF=""> tag in HTML, that is, it surrounds the character(s) that act as a link. The target of the link is supplied with the TARGET attribute. The value of the TARGET attribute should be the ID of the structure holding the appropriate note. The text corresponding to the example above would thus be tagged like this:

<L>Mary had a little lamb;
<REF TARGET="note0001">*
</REF>
</L>
If there is no character or character string in the text that acts as the link, use <PTR>. <PTR> is an empty tag (like <PB> or <LB>) that marks a linked point, like this:
<L>Mary had a little lamb;
<PTR TARGET="note0001">
</L>

ENDNOTE "ID" values

In order for the note linking mechanism (using <REF> or <PTR>) to function, the target structure (e.g. <P> or <DIV>) must be supplied with a unique ID (with the emphasis on UNIQUE--there must be no other ID of that value in that document). Feel free to make up an ID sequence that makes sense for the book in question, for example:

><HEAD>NOTES TO PART 2
</HEAD>
<DIV2 TYPE="note" ID="note2.1"> ...
<DIV2 TYPE="note" ID="note2.2"> ...
<DIV2 TYPE="note" ID="note2.3"> ...
If you have only a few notes to deal with, it is easiest to supply these ID values by hand. If you have many, there are simple ways to insert IDs automatically using either TextPad or Perl. There'll be an AmVerse Tip on this subject shortly.

EXCEPTIONS

AmVerse may contain as exceptional cases some kinds of notes that are commonplace in other collections, e.g. notes linked to pairs of reference numbers (2-2Note to the span of text from the first superscripted 2 to the second superscripted 2); or notes linked to spans of line numbers, or notes associated generally with a division of the text. Detailed rules are available for many of these exceptions in the keying guidelines for the Corpus of Middle English and Early English Books Online (q.v.), but the general rules are simple:
  1. place the note at one end or the other of the span of text to which it belongs (usually the back end, but sometimes the front if it seems to summarize what follows); and
  2. preserve as much of the linking mechanism as necessary, as literal text, in order to identify the span to which the note refers. So a note referring to lines 23-29 of a poem should be placed at the end of line 29, with the reference "23-29" retained within the text of the note:
    <L>Where once the mugwump sat.
    <NOTE>23-29. These lines are borrowed from a popular song called "The Mugwump's Retreat."</NOTE></L>