Passagesas

Passagesas is a term used in digital text analysis and content organization to describe a model in which individual textual passages are treated as primary units of data. A passage can be any cohesive block of text such as a paragraph, scene, stanza, or argument, and is accompanied by metadata and link relations that enable navigation, search, and analysis independent of full document boundaries.

The Passagesas data model typically includes a passage_id, the passage text, source information, start and end positions within the source, and metadata such as author, date, edition, and language. It also records relationships to other passages (contains, references, follows, precedes) and provides links to external resources. Representations may use formats such as JSON-LD or RDF to support interoperability with TEI-like markup.

Usage and development: The concept has appeared in digital humanities and interactive media discussions as a way to support granular annotation, critical editions, and navigable corpora. It emphasizes stable identification of passages and provenance tracking, enabling researchers and educators to reuse passages across projects.

Applications and benefits include improved search by topical units, easier annotation sharing, and modular edition workflows. Challenges include deciding how to segment text consistently across editions, handling edition variation, and managing storage and performance for large corpora.

Passagesas remains an emerging or niche model rather than a widely standardized framework. It intersects with hypertext, text segmentation, TEI, and annotation practices and may evolve as tools for digital libraries and education platforms mature.