The University of Chicago Library The First Folio of Shakespeare Prepared by Charlton Hinman Published by The Oxford Text Archive

General User Documentation for PhiloLogic

1. Introduction
2. Searching the Bibliography
    2.1 Bibliographic Fields
    2.2 Retrieving and Navigating Documents
3. Character Representation for Search Terms
    3.1 Accents and Special Characters
    3.2 Wildcard Characters and Boolean Operators
    3.3 Punctuation Marks and Searching
4. Selecting a Search Option
    4.1 Single Term and Phrase Search (Default)
    4.2 Proximity Searching in the Same Sentence or Paragraph
5. Selecting a Results Format
    5.1. Concordance Report (300 characters plus)
    5.2. KWIC Report (a single line of text)
    5.3. Frequency by Title
    5.4. Frequency by Author
    5.5. Navigating Documents from Word Searches
6. Getting More Help

Database-Specific Searching Tips

Bibliographic Searching:
Title: The First Folio of 1623 does not include Pericles, Prince of Tyre and Two Noble Kinsmen nor will one find nondramatic works and commendatory verses. Expect shortened, familiar titles with modern spelling (e.g., Twelfth Night rather than Twelfe Night, or What You Will and A Midsummer Night's Dream rather than A Midsommer Nights Dreame). In all cases, punctuation and spacing must match exactly that in the bibliography.
Date: The date of the first folio printing is 1623. The texts in the database range in date of composition or first performance from 1590-1613. The earliest of the two has been entered for searching. This information has been taken from The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (Cambridge,1969-72).

Orthographic Considerations:
This is an original spelling edition -- without standard orthography. One can find, for example, forms such as yeeres, yeers, and yeares as well as years. Expect the letter Uu in many cases in place of the letter Vv (e.g., loue) and the letter Ii in place of Jj (e.g., Iuliet). Count on contractions such as belou'd, cam'st, and ev'n/eu'n. Wildcard characters or Boolean operators can help detect such anomalies. One could enter, for example, ye[ea]r.* or belou.d to achieve the desired results.

Data-Entry Idiosyncrasies:
Several data-entry errors have been detected in other databases. One should avoid making arguments from silence. Fortunately, no errors have been found in The First Folio of Shakespeare.

Punctuation and Full-Text Searching:
Hyphens: Hyphens act as word separators. Thus, when searching hyphenated expressions one should treat them as separate words excluding the hyphen (e.g., if searching for euer-valiant, type in euer valiant).
Apostrophes: One must include apostrophes when searching words with apostrophes in them (e.g., only by typing life's will one find "life's"). In this database apostrophes do not act as word separators. Therefore contractions and elisions must be entered without spaces before or after the apostrophe.
Ampersand: The ampersand (&) is not a searchable character. Avoid Phrase Searches where an ampersand may be used as a conjunction and realize that &c must be searched as simply c.

Formatting and Display:
Table of Contents: In many cases the Act divisions have been encoded so as to be linked with the first scene. In these cases one is not able to pull up an entire act (see, for example, As You Like It).
Notes: There are no notes in the database.
Images: There are no images.

Please check the First Folio of Shakespeare errata page for the most current information on problems regarding the database or its PhiloLogic implementation.

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