Tag Glossary

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.

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Theme or topic

Machine name
TTHEMETOPIC

 

Belonging in WRITING > TEXTUALFEATURES, THEMETOPIC is a very flexible tag. It has no controlled vocabulary associated with it, but can contain any information. It may enclose much more than a single word; it may record central themes, side issues in a text, or objects of observation or discussion. Place tags, for instance, often appear within TTHEMETOPIC tags in accounts of travel literature, and NAME tags within accounts of biography and criticism. (Accounts of place as it operates in fiction use a SETTINGPLACE tag.) This element applies to both theme and topic. Theme is the central idea in a text stated either directly or indirectly; topic applies to interesting subjects appearing in a work that might not aspire to the status of a "theme". The tag is useful in describing examples of genres such as educational or non-fictional texts. It has no mandatory or optional sub-elements or attributes.