The elements making up a TEI document can be classified initially
into four basic groupings:
- chunks: elements such as paragraphs which can appear
directly within a text or a subdivision of a text but not within other
chunks
- phrase-level items: elements such as highlighted
phrases or parts of words which can appear only within ‘chunks’
but not between them
- intermediate items: elements such as lists or quotes which can appear either
within chunks or between them
- global items: elements such as pagebreaks which can
appear almost anywhere within a text
Most model classes are subclasses of one or other of these broad
categories, which are used in the definition of the macros used to
define content models.
Most elements are members of a model class.