What kind of TEI knowledge is useful, and for whom?
The modern academy is full of digital research tools and online collections, and humanities scholars and students increasingly depend on digital materials—primary sources, research databases, online journals, and the like. Among these collections, the ones which take the editing and scholarly integrity of the digital text most seriously are increasingly using TEI. Large-scale initiatives such as Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership are using the TEI as their underlying encoding model, and the major digital editions now being produced typically use TEI because it offers the most nuanced and rigorous approach to describing the complexities of the edited text currently available. Some understanding of text encoding in general, and of the TEI in particular, is thus becoming the equivalent of an understanding of standard editorial practices a few decades ago: helpful for anyone who works closely with texts, and essential for anyone whose research depends on a critical awaren
