This element is one half of a Ruby annotation (<ruby>), and it contains the narrative text in the document, which may be as short as a single character, to which a Ruby Textual Annotation (<rt>) should be applied.
What is Ruby: A Ruby textual annotation is an annotation, typically short, applied to a letter, word, phrase, or name that appears in narrative text. Ruby annotations can indicate, for example, pronunciation advice, notes for translation, semantic annotations, et al. Ruby is used with Japanese, for example, in furigana, which typically uses hiragana annotations on kanji base text. Ruby is also be used in Chinese Pīnyīn (a phonetic system for transcribing the sound of Chinese characters into Latin script) as well as for some Korean names. In display or print, the characters of a Ruby annotation are frequently placed above the characters they modify, in parenthesis after the characters they modify, or to the right of vertically set text.
Structure of NISO JATS Ruby: The <ruby> element is an inline wrapper element that contains some of the document narrative text (inside a Ruby Base <rb> element) and one or more Ruby Textual Annotations (inside an <rt> element) associated with that base text.
<!ELEMENT rb (#PCDATA %rb-elements;)* >
(#PCDATA | email | ext-link | uri | inline-supplementary-material | related-article | related-object | hr | bold | fixed-case | italic | monospace | overline | overline-start | overline-end | roman | sans-serif | sc | strike | underline | underline-start | underline-end | ruby | alternatives | inline-graphic | private-char | chem-struct | inline-formula | tex-math | mml:math | abbrev | milestone-end | milestone-start | named-content | styled-content | fn | target | xref | sub | sup | x)*
Any combination of:
... <p>... 畿内や西日本一帯では<ruby><rb>麦</rb> <rt>むぎ</rt></ruby>を<ruby><rb>裏</rb><rt>うら</rt></ruby> <ruby><rb>作</rb><rt>さく</rt></ruby>とする二毛作が普及していった。 ...</p> ...
... <p>... あの<ruby><rb>ロンドン警視庁</rb> <rt xml:lang="en">Scotland Yard</rt></ruby>は霧の中に隠れていた。 or あの<ruby><rb>ロンドン警視庁</rb> <rt xml:lang="ja">ろんどんけいしちょう</rt> </ruby>は霧の中に隠れていた。 ...</p> ...
... <p>In the midst of the document text, we find: <ruby><rb>多武峰</rb><rt>とうのみね</rt></ruby>, and yet another example: <ruby><rb>汉</rb><rt>hàn</rt></ruby> <ruby><rb>字</rb><rt>zì</rt></ruby>. </p> ...
JATS-format1.ent