Schema Documentation - Generic Document Profile
version 1.0

The p element

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The p element represents a paragraph of text consisting of one or several sentences.

The class attribute together with a CSS stylesheet should be used to retain any formatting information specific to a paragraph, such as first line indenting.

When print layout has to be strictly followed in converting a document to electronic format, paragraphs may be split by other elements such as full page images. Refer to the continuation attribute for more information on how to indicate that two p elements actually constitute a single whole.

Usage Example

<p>Independently of these indications, the abundance and variety of the osseous 
   remains of extinct Mammalia in South America … .</p>
    

Allowed parents

address, annotation, m:annotation-xml, aside (block variant), aside (toc variant), bibliography, block (block variant), block (toc variant), body, caption, code, description, entry (bibliography variant), entry (glossary variant), glossary, index, item, d:longdesc, note (block variant), note (phrase variant), object, sel:otherwise, quote, section (section variant), section (bibliography variant), section (glossary variant), section (index variant), section (toc variant), d:simplifiedLanguageDescription, d:summary, td, th, toc, d:tour and sel:when

Allowed children

This element may contain text.

This element may contain the following children: abbr, address, annoref, annotation, ssml:break, char, citation, code, d, definition, emph (text variant), emph (phrase variant), expansion, xforms:input, rend:linebreak, ln, m:math, name, note, noteref, num, object (text variant), object (phrase variant), pagebreak, ssml:phoneme (text variant), ssml:phoneme (phrase variant), ssml:prosody (text variant), ssml:prosody (phrase variant), quote, xforms:range, ref, its:ruby, s, ssml:say-as (text variant), ssml:say-as (phrase variant), xforms:secret, sel:select, xforms:select, xforms:select1, span (text variant), span (phrase variant), sub, ssml:sub (text variant), ssml:sub (phrase variant), sup, term, xforms:textarea, time, ssml:token (text variant), ssml:token (phrase variant) and w

Content model and additional requirements

Note that in addition to restrictions presented in the content model above, use of this element must also respect the following requirement:
  • The p element must neither be empty nor contain only whitespace.
Such requirements take precedence over any conflicting statements in the content model or in the lists above of allowed children and parents.

Namespace

http://www.daisy.org/ns/z3998/authoring/

Usage Details

Associating groups of paragraphs

It is sometimes necessary to provide information about paragraphs that are associated with each other. In a republishing context for example, paragraph association may have been expressed in the print source using some indentation convention, and for certain output formats, this association must be preserved.

The Z39.98 Structural Semantics Vocabulary contains the pgroup property, which is used to associate a group of paragraphs:

<block role="pgroup">
    <p>…</p>
    <p>…</p>
</block>