List items and delimitersEven though this field appears as a continuous text string, it is actually a list of discrete items. <dc:creator> Gabriela Montoya National Museum of Art, Spain </dc:creator>
In this software, both commas and semicolons act as commands to to create a new item on a separate line. If you enter: National Museum of Art, Spain it will be embedded in the metadata as: <dc:creator> National Museum of Art Spain </dc:creator> The next time you open the image metadata it will appear as: National Museum of Art; Spain which is not what you intended.
To prevent this you must enclose the words in quotes: “National Museum of Art, Spain “ <dc:creator> National Museum of Art, Spain </dc:creator>
It is best therefore to only use semicolons to separate items in a list and always use quotes when you need to use a comma.
Plain text and semicolons
Even though this field is plain text and commas and semicolons do not act as commands, it is still useful to separate independent parts of the text with semicolons for readability and possible separation by other software.
For descriptions of creative works it is likely that this field will consist of several distinct pieces of information strung together, such as: Francisco de Goya; The Third of May 1808; 1814; oil on canvas; 68 x 347 cm; Museo del Prado; ID: P00749; Public domain
This is a text string representing these individual characteristics of a painting: Creator; Title; Date; Material; Measurements; Repository; ID; Rights
By using semicolons it is clear where one characteristic ends and the other starts. Also, semicolons could be used to parse the information into separate columns of a spreadsheet for further processing.
back to Basic photo metadata guidelines
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