Orlando's content is structured by the unique XML tagset described in the Introduction and visualized in the Tag Diagrams. To assist in understanding Search result facets and Tag Search, this Glossary provides definitions for tags and attributes (descriptors associated with tags). Some attributes have set values. These are often explained within definitions of attributes. Other attribute values, such as genre names, are defined within the ontologies of the Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory, which hosts Orlando’s production environment. Searches on this page retrieve tags, attributes, and definitions, but not necessarily attribute values.
SCHOLARNOTE is a content tag available throughout the system, in BIOGRAPHY or WRITING documents, free-standing EVENTS, and in BIBLIOGRAPHY. The element contains further information of a specialized or scholarly nature that is removed to a note in order not to interrupt the flow of the entry.
This content sub-element, available only within BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION, can record either the specific name or a description of an educational institution. Its attributes are REG, INSTITUTION (capturing type of school), INSTITUTIONLEVEL (from primary to post-secondary), RELIGIOUS (to identify schools teaching a particular faith), and STUDENTBODY (with attributes CO-ED and SINGLESEX). Encloses name of institution (Ilminster Grammar School; St Anne’s College,, Oxford University) or description if no name is available (a convent school, a short-lived typing school). May be used in combination with ORGNAME for institutions prominent enough to be potentially named elsewhere in the system, but not for those unlikely ever to be mentioned again (Miss Brodie’s Academy for Young Ladies).
Attribute REG on SCHOOL expresses the name of the school in a standard form if not done in the prose, and is useful for long-established schools that have changed their names. Colleges at collegiate universities take college name, double comma, university name (Trinity College,, University of Toronto). A few ancient universities named for places take the form without of: Oxford University.
SELFCONSTRUCTED is a sub-element within BIOGRAPHY > PERSONNAME to capture names which a person chooses to use in her everyday life, not only as her PSEUDONYM. As the element name suggests, these are names she applies to herself and, for example, writes on her cheques as well as signs her books with. Whereas a PSEUDONYM applies to a particular text or group of texts, SELFCONSTRUCTED signifies a name a writer elected to live by, like Maya Angelou or Hilary Mantel. It has optional attributes for NAMESIGNIFIER, REG, and WROTEORPUBLISHEDAS.
This is an attribute attached to all identity categories within BIOGRAPHY > CULTURALFORMATION. Its purpose is to distinguish between people who place themselves within an identity category (e.g., Jeannette Winterson identifies as lesbian) and those whom we place in that category though they themselves did not (e.g., While she denied being a lesbian, she maintained close relationships with women throughout her life). This attribute acknowledges the importance of personal, political and historical placements of one's own subject position; it assumes that identities are not simply labels we assign to other people but shifting categories which we both place ourselves within, and, in which history places us.
SELF-DEFINED is an optional attribute available with CLASS, DENOMINATION, ETHNICITY, GENDER, GEOGHERITAGE, NATIONALHERITAGE, NATIONALITY, RACECOLOUR, and SEXUALIDENTITY. It has attribute values of SELFYES, SELFNO, and SELFUNKNOWN.
SELFDESCRIPTION, a sub-element belonging to WRITING > RECEPTION, encloses a statement, an analysis or evaluation by an author of her own work. It’s sometimes a judgement call between use of this tag and PATTITUDES. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.
Sub-tag available in BIOGRAPHY > FAMILY, but only within MARRIAGE. SEPARATION captures information concerning the marital conditions of the subject. This element is used to indicate that a woman separated legally or officially from her partner without a divorce. (Sometimes the DIVORCE tag may be used later for the same relationship.)
This element belongs to WRITING > PRODUCTION. It encloses a statement about (see attributes) either sections of a book appearing sequentially in a newspaper or magazine, or gradual publication, one section or one volume at a time. It has one optional attribute attached, FORMOFSERIALIZATION with values of VOLUMEFORM and PERIODICALFORM.
TSETTINGCLASS is an optional attribute attached to the element TSETTINGPLACE (and belonging to WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES) that specifies the socio-economic status characters who feature in this fictional setting (that is, the scene of a fiction, whether the place is actual or imaginary). It recognizes that the setting of a novel about upper-class life may differ widely from the setting of a novel centred on struggling workers’ families, even though they may overlap topographically. It has one sibling attribute, SETTINGPLACETYPE, and four allowable values: UPPERCLASS, WORKINGCLASS, MIDDLECLASS, and WIDERANGE. The four values allow the assignment of an appropriate socio-economic status to a SETTINGPLACE.
This element in WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES captures the time in which a fictional story is set relative to the writer's time, not the reader's. It should contain a statement, which may include a specific date like 1789, or general description, such as in the future, or should relate to a recognizable event like after the First World War. N.b. used for works of fiction (including drama and poetry) only, not for history, biography, or travel writing. Has no mandatory or optional sub-elements, but one optional attribute, SETTINGDATETYPE, with values of PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE, and AMBIGUOUS.
SETTINGDATETYPE is an optional attribute, attached to the element TSETTINGDATE (in WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES), that specifies the historical era of a setting. It has four allowable values: past, present, future, and ambiguous.
TSETTINGPLACE, belonging conceptually to WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES, addresses the real or imaginary place in which a fictional (not a factual) text is set. Encloses statement, with a tagged PLACE (or several) included if possible. This element has no mandatory or optional sub-elements but has two optional attributes, SETTINGCLASS and SETTINGPLACETYPE. SettingClass has values of upperClass, workingClass, middleClass, and wideRange (recognizing the separate existence of, e.g., both well-heeled London and squalid underbelly London). The attribute TSETTINGPLACETYPE has the values fictive, real, and identifiable. TSETTINGPLACE can be used twice of the same text, with different SettingPlaceType attribute values, in the case of e.g. an imaginary house set at an actual address.
TSETTINGPLACETYPE is an optional attribute attached to the element SETTINGPLACE (belonging conceptually to TEXTUALFEATURES) in WRITING. It is modified by three values: fictive, real, and identifiable. Fictive signals imaginary settings or locations; real identifies those that are actual; identifiable applies in situations where the name of a location has been changed but is obviously modelled on a real place. For example, Margaret Laurence calls Neepawa, Manitoba, Manawaka in her novels, but we can identify it as Neepawa. TSETTINGCLASS is a sibling to TSETTINGPLACETYPE, which further describes the location of the fiction by specifying which ranks of society there are involved.
Settlement, a sub-element of PLACE available everywhere in Orlando, captures the names of cities, towns, villages, hamlets and areas within larger settlements (for example, districts of London). It encloses just the name of the place, without punctuation. Settlement has optional attributes for Current and Reg. For districts of London or other large cities Current attribute is used for city name and Reg for district name. We need to provide for search results that will deliver *either* London *or* Chelsea, *either* New York *or* Manhattan, and using both attributes is so far the only way to achieve this.
This element captures one word or phrase identifications of sexuality (i.e., "lesbian," "monogamous," "heterosexual") and from this information we will be able to point our reader towards women writers whom they may be interested in studying in a critical analysis of these identifications. Capturing the term "lesbian" in a sexualIdentity tag does not signify that the subject of the biography was a lesbian; such identifications are often impossible for reasons of historical gaps and silences. It does suggest to our readers that if they are interested in studying lesbian issues, they may wish to look at this particular writer. We assume that sexual identity does not function in an essentialist manner and that to act monogomously does not reflect an essential, ontological state of being. But we are also assuming that issues of sexual identity influence a woman's relationship to her writing and to her life and therefore, we emphasize the importance of capturing this information in a systematic way.
Sexuality is one of the issues (along with religion, race and ethnicity, language, class, and nationality) we have defined as significant in discussing the cultural formation of a woman. This element captures discussions of her sexuality as an identity or as an issue in her life. It is not meant to capture individual sexual experiences and relationships (see intimateRelationships). We are attempting, within this element to gesture towards some of the complicated issues around sexuality, for example, the politics of outing, the historical specificity of some categories such as "congenital invert," or the multiple forms of relating to one's own sexuality. Capturing discussions of her sexuality within this element, will help researchers interested in the historical, ideological and gendered constructions of sexuality.
This element has to do with the author's influence on other writers, other women writers, other women, the literary tradition, and society as a whole.
This element captures all unpaid work, volunteer work, or other significant activity that a person was engaged in. We hope to counter the ideological assumption which does not recognize women's unpaid work as work; for example, parenting and unpaid domestic labour are not included when the International Monetary Fund calculates the gross national product of a country. We hope to counter this ideological assumption by emphasizing the need to systematically capture women's exclusion from the paid workforce and their participation in the unpaid workforce.
Socialrank, an optional attribute for class, provides a structured vocabulary for class position. Systematizing class position by using the social rank attribute, allows the tagger the freedom to use whatever term is most applicable in the prose.
This optional attribute attached to the element SCHOOL (within BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION) records whether the school is single-sex or inclusive. This attribute (with values SINGLESEX and CO-ED) helps us to interpret the influence of single-sex education on women writers across historical periods.
Styled is a sub-element within BIOGRAPHY > PERSONNAME, that refers to titles which are called courtesy titles. For example, peers’ eldest sons (and their wives) often possess a title by virtue of their temporary position as heir. Titles of this kind do not give a seat in the House of Lords. Styled is used for all those people whose title results from their father's title, e.g. Lady Mary, Lady Jane, Lady Florence Dixie, as opposed to Lady Smith and Lady Jones. This tag has attributes REG (in case of variant spelling) and WROTEORPUBLISHEDASYES.
I.e. subject of study. This content sub-element in BIOGRAPHY > EDUCATION, generally encloses a word or phrase, and records areas of study which are significant to a writer's education. It has one attribute, REG, to explain non-standard terms (<SUBJECT REG="HISTORY”>kings and queens of England</>). We are particularly interested in subjects which influenced her writing (for example, she studied archeology and her first novel was set at an archeological dig), classical language studies for women writers in the early period (recording the importance of ancient languages as a masculine domain, and the acquisition of translation skills), and other subjects which were non-traditional for women (for example, engineering).
PSUMBMISSIONSREJECTIONS is a sub-tag belonging within WRITING > PRODUCTION. It holds information (at least one full sentence) about daring, significant, or turning-point submissions and about rejections of work by publishers. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.
This sub-element of PERSONNAME, available only within BIOGRAPHY > BIRTHNAME, captures the last name of a person at birth. Within BIRTHNAME, it is placed last in Western usage, first in Chinese. It has one optional attribute, REG, for the rare instances when a surname has two different spellings. In this case the REG attribute supplies the proper form, and a SCHOLARNOTE should outline the discrepancy.
