Guidelines

The EpiDoc Community maintains a set of Guidelines meant to provide comprehensive direction for the application of Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) markup to the preparation of digital editions of primary source documents like inscriptions or papyri in conjunction with the current version of the EpiDoc Schema. They are designed to be used in conjunction with the TEI Guidelines, revision P5.

The easiest way to use the Guidelines is via our online copies, hosted courtesy of the Stoa Consortium. The latest numbered release of the EpiDoc Guidelines is always at this address, and should be used for all formal purposes.

You can also download a zipped copy of the latest Guidelines from our Files section if you need to use them offline. Previous versions of the Guidelines are also available in the same section. An unstable, developmental version of the Guidelines is also available for review.

Deficiencies and errors in the Guidelines — especially discontinuities with the latest schema and example stylesheets — should be reported as bugs via our bug tracker.

Questions regarding any aspect of the Guidelines or the markup approaches they recommend are very welcome on the Markup List.

Persons interested in volunteering to assist with the development and maintenance of the Guidelines should also post a statement to that effect on the list.

• See also Translating the EpiDoc Guidelines

To cite the EpiDoc Guidelines, please use the following information:

Tom Elliott, Gabriel Bodard, Elli Mylonas, Simona Stoyanova, Charlotte Tupman, Scott Vanderbilt, et al. (2007-2025), EpiDoc Guidelines: Ancient documents in TEI XML (Version 9). Available: https://epidoc.stoa.org/gl/latest/.