Checklists

THL Toolbox > Essays > THL Staff Documentation for XML Essays > Checklists

Checklists and Helpful Tables

Contributor(s): José Cabezón, Michael Cox, David Germano, Nathaniel Grove, Alison Melnick, Steven Weinberger.

    
Overview of StepsCheck EssayConduct a SearchMarkup Checklist
Post XML ConversionStyles GraphYour Own List

An Overview of Steps for Processing an Issue of JIATS

For an overview of the process involved in publishing a JIATS article go to the Journal Submissions page.

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Check Each Author’s Article For the Following:

  1. Create entries in the Glossary Table for author and title of all entries in the Bibliography.
  2. Make sure we have received the author’s abstract, bio, and photo with the article.
  3. Make sure all Tibetan, Sanskrit, Mongolian, and Chinese words are entered correctly in the Glossary Table.
  4. Make sure all Tibetan terms in the Glossary Table (and in parentheses in the article) are in THL Extended Wylie transliteration.
  5. Make sure all Word Styles have been applied for bold, italic, indented citations, English language place names, and so forth.
  6. Make sure that all bibliographic citations in the notes and bibliography conform to THL standards (see documentation for details).
  7. Make sure the canonical texts have complete references, including citations of the catalogue name and volume number.
  8. Change single quotes to double quotes, unless it’s a quote within a quote.
  9. Change all quotes (single and double) to smart quotes. Make sure single quote that represents the a chung in Wylie is a close single quote (’ = apostrophe) and not an open single quote (‘).
  10. Change double dash to en dash (make sure there is a space both before and after the en dash), except for hyphens.
  11. In Bibliographies, use a 3em dash (that is, three consecutive em dashes) for repeat author entry (do NOT use multiple single dashes or underscores).
  12. For passages in Tibetan, Sanskrit, Mongolian, or Chinese, enter the translation in the body of the essay itself and place the Tibetan/Sanskrit/Mongolian/Chinese in a footnote/endnote.
  13. All punctuation, including periods and commas, always go inside a close quotation mark. The only exceptions are: semi-colon ( ; ), colon ( : ), and en dash (–).
  14. Footnote/endnote numbers always follow all punctuation marks (including colons), except for the en dash (–), which the footnote/endnote number precedes.
  15. Make sure that all numbers conform to THL conventions.
  16. Apply proper formatting for headers.
  17. Make sure there are captions for each image, table, chart, or video clip. This is especially important because the markup for these media will be added after XML conversion.
  18. Make sure there are no extra carriage returns (created by hitting the “enter” key) in the essay, and in particular between paragraphs. These will create huge unwanted spaces between paragraphs when the article is posted online.
  19. If you have questions, refer to articles in previous issues of JIATS for examples.
  1. Make sure the metadata table is filled out and all Word paragraph styles are applied to the essay Word doc before conversion:
    1. the h1 front, h1 body, and h1 back Word styles
    2. the normal Word style to the body of the essay
    3. citation prose 1, citation verse 2, etc. where necessary
    4. Footnote text,ftxt to ALL footnotes.
    5. All footnote numbers have the style Footnote Reference,fr.
    6. Bibliographic entry,be to ALL entries in the Bibliography section at the end of the essay.

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Search for the Following:

After all corrections, etc. have been made to the XML file, run the following searches in the browser's find function:

  1. .. (two periods in a row);
  2. ,, (two commas)
  3. ”. (remember that you have to search on smart quotes or it won’t find them)
  4. ”,
  5. ’.
  6. ’,
  7. )s
  8. )es
  9. )ies
  10. )”
  11. .).
  12. . (space and then a period)
  13. , (space and then a comma)
  14. ; (space and then a semi-colon)
  15. : (space and then a colon)
  16. ( + space
  17. space + )
  18. [[
  19. ]]
  20. [ [
  21. ] ]
  22. ((
  23. ( (
  24. ))
  25. ) )
  26. [ (
  27. ) ]
  28. . [ (note: this is mainly to find spaces before a note)

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Glossary Table Checklist

  1. Make sure each single quote that represents the a chung in Wylie is a close single quote (’= apostrophe) and not an open single quote (‘).
  2. Remove any English-language pluralizers and possessives from the Glossary Table. For example, if the author refers to “thu’u bkwan’s Crystal Mirror,” make sure that in the Glossary Table the name appears as “thu’u bkwan” and not “thu’u bkwan’s”.
  3. Capitalize English translations of proper nouns (text titles, names of temples, and so forth). Example: the translation of of lha sa gtsug lag khang in the Glossary Table is Central Temple of Lhasa.
  4. Remove any capitalizations that should not occur in Wylie, Sanskrit, and so forth.
  5. Make sure all available information is included for each entry.

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Post-XML Conversion Checklist

After an essay has been converted to XML:

  1. Make sure that all quotations have remained intact in the conversion process, and that none are missing.
  2. Check to make sure there the same number of footnotes appear in the post-conversion version of the article as in its original Word document.
  3. Check to make sure every paragraph in the Word document has also made it into the xml file.
  4. Check all ’s, s, s’ after foreign words and proper nouns to make sure they are not marked up as part of a foreign word or term, and that when the English translation is plural it is correct (for example, that it reads “monasteries” and not “monasterys”).
  5. Check the English indefinite articles “a” and “an” before foreign-language words in the Glossary Table: make sure the correct article is used for the English translation, since this will immediately follow the indefinite article. XML Example: This will display online as: “This title was used for an <term lang="eng">emperor</term> (<term lang="tib">btsan po</term>).” Word doc: This title was used for an btsan po.
  6. Check that <persName>s that include <surname>, <foreName> components have the correct markup. These will probably have to be fixed by hand in the XML file.
  7. In the glossary.xml file, change all date ranges to the full range. For example, change “1357-78” to “1357-1378” Note: this only applies to the glossary.xml file. Do not make this type of change in the essay itself.
  8. Check the Word doc against the XML file to make sure that all formatting (such as indented quotes, indented verse, and the like) are marked up as they were pre-conversion.
  9. If there were English translations of glossary table words that appeared in quotation marks in the original, adjust these so they display identically to the original article.
  10. When there is more than one English translation for a single foreign-language word, make sure that the markup and display is correct in the body of the article after it has been converted to XML.
  11. If there were any terms in the glossary table that are also included in English words (for example, the place name “mon”), go through the article and make sure that parts of English words have not accidentally been marked up. So, if the place name “mon” appears in the article, go through and make sure that all instances of “monastery” are not split up with the markup for “mon.”
  12. If a Tibetan word is the first in a sentence, these must be capitalized by hand after conversion.
  13. Search for "the the" and delete where necessary.
  14. Search for (( and remove doubled up English translations of terms.

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Markup Checklist

For an exhaustive list of Word styles (to be used in the Word document itself or in the glossary table) and examples of their XML markup, go to the Staff Instructions for the Glossary Table page.

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Your Own List(s)

While marking up an essay, you might come across issues that require you to: ask questions of Steve or the essay's author, check that certain tricky things have converted properly, make sure photos are placed correctly, and so forth. Keep a list of all of these things in a separate Word document while you are marking up each essay so that you can refer back to it once you have finished marking up the essay.

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