AmVerse FAQs #5: <Q> and <LG> Miscellaneous.

  1. When is a group of lines not a Line Group?
  2. Some good uses for <Q>.
  1. When is a group of lines not a Line Group?

    When a group of lines is quoted (e.g. in a passage of prose, or in a note, or as part of an epigraph), do not place the lines inside a <LG> tag unless you have good reason to believe that the lines represent a complete stanza, e.g. if more than one stanza is quoted and you need to separate them; or possibly if the metrical form makes it clear that a whole stanza is quoted. If all you know is that some lines of verse are being quoted, then tag them as verse lines (<L>), period.

  2. Some good uses for <Q>.

    1. In most cases like this, the tag that's really needed to surround the quoted <L>s is not <LG> but <Q>, since the whole passage is being quoted from some longer poem:

      <P>When I read Smith's odes, I can only exclaim, in the words of Roscoe,

      <Q> <L>Come, take up your hats, and away let us haste</L>
      <L>To the Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast.</L> </Q>

      For was there ever born a more chitinous poet than Smith?</P>

      [Sometimes (e.g. when the quotation coexists with commentary inside a <NOTE>), you may need, as in the above example, to embed the <Q> tag inside a <P> tag.]

    2. <Q>s are used for block quotations, whether of prose or verse. But don't use them for in-line quotations, or for block quotations that include any non-quoted matter. Use it here:

      <P>When the subject of beginnings is broached, one cannot help but think of that finest of first sentences:

      <Q>A new voice hailed me of an old friend when, first returned from the Peninsula, I paced again in that long street of Damascus which is called Straight; and suddenly taking me wonderingly by the hand "Tell me (said he), since thou art here again in the peace and assurance of Ullah, and whilst we walk, as in the former years, toward the new blossoming orchards, full of the sweet spring as the garden of God, what moved thee, or how couldst thou take such journeys into the fanatic Arabia?</Q>

      Doughty's work bumps and bounces over the next 800 pages, but never again reaches the height from which it began.</P>

      but not here:

      <P>When the subject of beginnings is broached, one cannot help but think of that finest of first sentences,

      In a hobbit hole (what admirable concision!) there lived a hobbit.

      Tolkien's work wanders wonderfully through another 200 pages, but never again induces such a sense of inevitability.</P>

      In the second case, the quotation is interrupted, and it is therefore easier to treat it as an inline quotation and omit the <Q> tags.

    3. <Q>s are usually the best way to tag even very substantial items embedded in prose, e.g. a poem or a letter or a document of some kind quoted within a biography, or within a note, or within an introduction.

      <Q> can if necessary even contain an entire <TEXT>, with its own <FRONT> matter, <BODY>, <DIV> structure, and so on. Use <Q> for such embedded items, rather than trying to treat them as <DIV>s of the main text (unless that's really what they are). Treating them as <DIV>s forces you to treat all the material surrounding them as <DIV>s too, at the same level.

      Prefer this:

      <DIV1 TYPE="introduction">
      <P>blah blah</P>
      <P>blah blah</P>
      <P>
      <Q>here's a poem</Q>
      </P>
      <P>blah blah</P>
      </DIV1>

      rather than this:

      <DIV1 TYPE="introduction">
      <DIV2 TYPE="stuff before the poem">
      <P>blah blah</P>
      <P>blah blah</P>
      </DIV2>
      <DIV2 TYPE="poem">
      <LG><L>here's a poem</L></LG>
      </DIV2>
      <DIV2 TYPE="stuff after the poem">
      <P>blah blah</P>
      </DIV2>
      </DIV1>

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