Authors in the main text
Abstract
Encoding of authors in bibliographic entries, using author and persName
author
citation
bibliographic reference
author
bibl
Encoding Instructions (old P4 version)
The WWP uses the author element only to encode the names of people whom the text explicitly cites as authors in the context of a bibliographic reference. We do not use author for the names of people whom we know to be authors, or for the names of our own authors, unless they are being cited in a bibliographic context. A bibliographic context means either a footnote referencing a book or quote, a citation in the text accompanying a quotation or a textual reference, a list of sources, or some similar context.
Examples
Thus: <quote>...the gigantic white whale had him by the leg... </quote> <bibl> <title>Moby-Dick, or, The Whale</title> <author><persName>Herman Melville</persName></author></bibl> but <p>I spoke to my friend <persName key="hmelville.qqf">Melville</persName> the other day. </p> Similarly, even in the case of letters, where the name of the author will appear at the bottom of each letter, that name should be encoded with <persName>, since the letter is not citing the name in a bibliographical way. For the name of the author on a document’s title page, we use <docRole> with a nested <persName> if appropriate.