item

Element information

Content

• Sequence [1..1]
  1. enum [1..1]The enumerator associated with a subdivision or level (e.g., 1. for sections, (a) for subsections). Note: When an enumerator appears as two enumerator (e.g., (a)(2)), the structure is produced with two levels where the second level has an attribute of display-inline="yes-display-inline"
  2. header [0..1]The header is the structure, often proceeded by an enum element that represents the "bold" text or heading of a subdivision or level. For example: the words “Short Title” in the phrase “Section 1. Short Title.” The text of headers is typed in sentence style casing (upper and lower case) so that the table of contents entries can be extracted from the body of the document. Display mechanisms (both print and on-line) will need to transform the casing of headers based on their legislative structure. Section headers display uppercased. Subsection headers display in a caps and small caps casing style where the first letter of the header is always uppercased; characters originally typed using uppercasing are caps and all other words are initial capped, except for the following words: a, an, and, as, at, but, by, for, in, of, on, or, the, and to. Levels below the subsection level are cased using caps and small caps, but maintain sentence style casing. For all other structural levels (e.g., division, title, subtitle, part, subpart, etc.), the casing is transformed to uppercase. In addition, any necessary punctuation and spaces following the header will be generated for display or printing. For example, when certain structures, e.g., Titles, Subtitles, Chapters, etc., follow OLC style, the display or print system will generate a centered header with no subsequent punctuation. For sections using OLC style, a generated period will follow the header, and for structures below the section level, a generated period followed by an em-dash will follow the header.
  3. text [0..1]Textual material that follows a header, an enumerator, an enumerator/header pair, or as a cut-in (flush-left) final text after a non-structural element such as a quoted-block, table, graphic, etc.. In appropriations bills, the function performed by the text element is usually performed by the appropriations paragraph element.
  4. Choice [0..*]
     from subst. group nonstructured-level-model
     tableThe table model for Congressional legislative documents uses the OASIS (formerly known as CALS) Table Exchange Model with some additions and modifications to accommodate House and Senate requirements as defined by the U.S. Government Printing Office.
     graphicA pointer to a file containing a graphic and information about the graphic. The <graphic> element uses attributes that point to an external graphic file such as a photograph of a person or a drawing of a warning symbol. The attributes and their values have been modeled on GPO attributes. The actual graphic is usually stored in an external file and merely named by the attributes of this element. The element itself would be empty, but it is used to contain a brief description of the graphic (See element <graphic-description>). This description can be used for searching, to display in place of the graphic in an online system, or to be read by a voice synthesis device for the visually-impaired who cannot see the graphic.
     formulaContainer for a graphic element representing a scientific or mathematical equation.
     pagebreakUsed to force a new page in the output. Should be used very rarely.
     legis-commentThe legis-comment element defines a comment to the legislative language.
     quoted-blockTextual matter used to amend current law. Quoted block is so named because it is printed or displayed with quotation marks in front of each structural and non-structural level. (These quotation marks are generated for print or display; they are not part of the data.) The name “quoted block” is not meant to imply that the words within this element exist somewhere else and are being quoted. Rather, they signify text to be used to amend current law. In print or display, quoted material usually takes on the style (margins, enumeration style, typographic style, etc.) of the document which is being amended. Thus, a bill in OLC style that is intended to modify United States Code, would put text that was to be inserted into the United States Code inside the quoted block (structure of legislation) and the words would print in USC style, with a quotation mark preceding each level. Other rules that apply to the specific style associated with the quoted-block also need to be applied. For example, when using USC style, section enumerators are preceded by a section symbol and a thin space rather than the word “Sec.”. Note: Words displayed in quotation marks for emphasis or to indicate a speech are not considered to be quoted-block.
     non-statutory-materialUsed to contain non-statutory material. Non-statutory material examples are poems, song stanzas, newspaper articles, and book passages.
     listA container element for a sequence of list-items organized as a list. The list can be non-numbered, numbered, or lettered.
     tocThe table of contents for a measure or portion of a measure. The attributes of the toc element are used for regeneration of the toc within the authoring environment. There are essentially two toc sub-models (toc-entries or multi-column-toc-entries). Both models are non-hierarchial in that the legislative structure is defined in an attribute rather in the structure of the toc itself. The toc-entries sub-model, the most common, is sequence of enumerators and headers from the measure's source using PCDATA. There is no distrinction between the enumerator and header elements within the toc-entry elements. The multi-column-toc-entries sub-model contain up to three columns of data per entry (toc-enum, level-header, and target or page-num). Both sub-models also support quoted-entry elements (ie.g., toc-quoted-entry and multi-column-toc-quoted-entry respectively).
  5. Choice [0..*]
     • subitemA hierarchical structure of a measure. This level is the lowest level represented within a measure and is contained directly with items. Subitems are normally enumerated with uppercased double characters within parentheses (e.g., (AA)). Once reaching (ZZ), subitems are enumerated with triple letters (e.g., (AAA), (BBB), etc.).
     • continuation-textTextual material belonging to a level, the text follows the sub-level

Attributes

Used in

• Anonymous type of element rule
• Anonymous type of element rules-clause
• Anonymous type of element rules-paragraph
• Anonymous type of element rules-subparagraph
• Anonymous type of element rules-subdivision
• Anonymous type of element rules-item
• Anonymous type of element rules-subitem
• Anonymous type of element subclause
• Anonymous type of element quoted-block  via extension of quoted-block-model
• Type quoted-block-model

Substitution hierarchy

• legis-structures
  • subsection
  • paragraph
  • subparagraph
  • clause
  • subclause
  • item
  • subitem
  • division
  • subdivision
  • title
  • subtitle
  • chapter
  • subchapter
  • part
  • subpart
  • section
  • appropriations-major
  • appropriations-intermediate
  • appropriations-small