The Christian Classics Ethereal Library uses a markup language known as ThML (Theological Markup Language) for electronic texts. This markup language encodes a great deal of information about the text, such as document structure, notes, scripture references, subjects, synchronization points, and much more. The inclusion of all of this information will make it possible for users to access the CCEL in ways that are not possible in paper libraries. You will be able to see what your favorite authors had to say on a particular scripture passage, for example, or look up everything in the church fathers on a particular topic.

To support these applications, texts must have special formatting codes called "markup" added. This document tells how to prepare electronic texts for the CCEL in Microsoft Word. It describes the basics of preparing and submitting a document and then discusses particular ways you can format a document (using a simpler subset of the required formatting) to make integration with the CCEL easier.

At the most basic level, to prepare a document for the CCEL, just prepare the document in Word to look pretty much like the book from which it came. Include all of the text of the book exactly as it appears. Use fonts, sizes, and styles to look similar to the print edition. It is not necessary to retain margins, line breaks, page breaks, or unambiguous end-of-line hyphenation of the print edition.

Insert footnotes as ordinary footnotes in Word, using the Insert | Footnote… menu item or the Insert-Footnote-Now shortcut, Alt+Ctrl+F. If there are images or tables, use the normal Word facilities. Then save the document in RTF format and email it to the CCEL (Harry.Plantinga@wheaton.edu) or upload it via anonymous FTP to ccel.wheaton.edu, in the incoming directory. You could also put it on a floppy disk and mail it via the US postal service.

Much of the formatting in Word is done by applying character and paragraph styles to the document. Paragraph style sheets are named groupings of styles for paragraphs, such as single-space, indent first line, Times New Roman 11-point, etc. A paragraph style can be applied to a paragraph by selecting it from the left-most dropbox on the formatting toolbar. The ThML template provides several paragraph styles that should be used for formatting documents—styles such as Body Text, Body Text First Indent, Heading 1, Verse, BlockQuote, and others.

So, for example, if you want to format a chapter title, you could place the cursor on the line containing the chapter title and press ctrl-alt-2. The remainder of this paper will describe how to use a few essential paragraph styles and a few additional codes. A full description of how to format documents in Word for the CCEL can be found in the paper ThML Markup in Microsoft Word for the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Headings for the preface, table of contents, and index, chapter titles, section heads, and the like should all be formatted using the styles Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, or Heading 4. These styles can also be applied with ctrl-alt-1, etc. and viewed or modified in the outline view of a document.

Normal paragraphs of text may be formatted with the P style. The first paragraph of each section or chapter, if formatted differently, may be formatted with the P_First style. By default, P is indented and P_First is not.

Theological books often contain verse -- poetry, hymns, or versified presentation of material such as the Psalms. Verse is often typeset with varying levels of indentation. These are represented with Verse 1, Verse 2, and Verse 3 paragraph styles. In the example below, the first and third line of each stanza is of style Verse 1, the second Verse 2, and the fourth Verse 3.

In theological texts, scripture passages may be cited, quoted, or explained. Citations refer to a passage, but quotes include the text of a passage in the document. Citations and quotations do not need to be marked, as there will be a program to find them automatically. However, explanations or commentary should be marked.

Electronic texts formatted according to these guidelines can be converted to html by computer program (after a bit more formatting). Furthermore, all of this special formatting will make the library much more usable: it will enable automatic conversion of texts to other formats, automatic construction of subject and scripture indexes for the whole library, and other uses yet to be imagined.