n. (abbr. TEI)an XML-based standard for encoding textual resources so that they can be exchanged, modified, and rendered by computersMichelson and Rothenberg 1992, 268Besides acquiring a large corpus of electronic text, scholars are developing encoding standards for documents, to ensure that converted files can be read on a variety of computers and software. The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a collaboration among the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the Association for Computational Linguistics, and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing . . .Michelson and Rothenberg 1992, 268The TEI encoding standards closely follow the International Standards Organization’s standard ISO 8879, the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). . . . The TEI encoding standards use delimiters and tags to distinguish markup from text and to express specific information about the format of a document.DeRose 1997, 298The data found in documents is quite different from traditional, tabular database records, however, and requires new models. SGML has been at the center of this move because of some very simple characteristics, such as allowing authors to create the particular labels needed for their specific applications. These characteristics led to its use by the Text Encoding Initiative and for Encoded Archival Description.Anderson 2021, 119The Darwin Correspondence Project’s Epsilon, for instance, creates a scientific correspondence network through an XTF-based framework that maps data from correspondence to the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI).TEI 2025Since 1994, the TEI Guidelines have been widely used by libraries, museums, publishers, and individual scholars to present texts for online research, teaching, and preservation.
Notes
Initially sponsored by the Association for Computers and the Humanities with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1987, TEI is now maintained by the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium. Documents encoded using TEI often support digital humanities projects.
