## Text Encoding Initiative

### The XML Version of the TEI Guidelines

# 8 Base Tag Set for Prose

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This chapter describes the base tag set for prose texts, the simplest of the base tag sets defined by these Guidelines. It should be used for all texts in prose, whether fiction or non-fiction, novel or technical manual.

Prose material can appear in the front and back matter of virtually any text type, even where the body may be composed of very different component elements. Consequently, the elements needed to encode conventional prose are all included in the core tag set described in chapter 6 Elements Available in All TEI Documents) and the base tag set for prose itself defines no elements at all: it merely invokes the tag set for default text structure. When this base tag set is used, all the elements defined in the core tag sets are available, as are those in the default text structure described in chapter 7 Default Text Structure. No other elements are available, unless one or more of the additional tag sets is also enabled.

The base tag set for prose should be invoked by defining the parameter entity TEI.prose with the value `INCLUDE`. A document using this base tag set and no other will thus begin as follows:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
    <!DOCTYPE TEI.2 PUBLIC "-//TEI P4//DTD Main Document Type//EN" "tei2.dtd" [
      <!ENTITY % TEI.XML    'INCLUDE' >
      <!ENTITY % TEI.prose  'INCLUDE' >
      ]>

The base tag set for prose is formally defined by the following DTD fragment:

    <!-- 8.: Base Tag Set for Prose-->
    <!--
     ** Copyright 2004 TEI Consortium.
     ** See the main DTD fragment 'tei2.dtd' or the file 'COPYING' for the
     ** complete copyright notice.
    -->
    <!--This base tag set does nothing but declare and embed the
    default text structure.  When it is selected, therefore,
    the only tags available are those in the core and those
    defined in other selected tag sets.-->
    <![%TEI.singleBase;[
    <!ENTITY % TEI.structure.dtd PUBLIC '-//TEI P4//ELEMENTS Default Text
    Structure//EN' 'teistr2.dtd' >
    %TEI.structure.dtd;
    ]]>
    <!-- end of 8.-->

Up: Contents Previous: 7 Default Text Structure Next: 9 Base Tag Set for Verse