• Need to distinguish annotation as:
  

1. Transcription: annotation constitutes (more or less) primary data for an analysis -- e.g. when the data are written texts where there is no recording of the original audio or visual signal (e.g., transcriptions of speech or texts that originated as written "utterances")
2. Tags: annotation provides search / entry points into analysis of primary (audio and/or video recording of the) data

• Is resistance, e.g., of Deaf community, to annotation that it is conceived of only as transcription that "reduces the language to writing"?
  

• Examples of annotation standards: IPA, Leipzig Glossing Rules
  

• Relationship between "model" and "data" and consequent importance of grounding any annotation schema in the needs of a model and the relationship between the question being asked and the phenomena being modeled (cf. Twaddell's platonic "truth" versus heuristics).
• Evaluation of an annotation standard then necessarily in terms of actual user communities and their questions; goodness of a standard is then a product not just of the initial developers/users, but also of the flexibility/ingenuity of the later user of annotated data.
  

• Interoperability
• Can the annotation be validated and used in different tools or computational models? Need to separate logical structure versus "presentation" format. Also need to think both:
  
• horizontally (Is it possible to translate to/from other annotation schema?)
• vertically (Is the standard useful for purposes different to the originally intended ones?)

• Extensibility/Adaptability
• Can the annotation schema be extended to other styles, other dialects, other languages, ...
• Is there a solid and suitably diverse core of users/maintainers to allow the standard to evolve and change in response to user feedback/new needs?
• Are there good standards/mechanisms for versioning?
  
• Granularity
• Are there principled mechanisms for providing partial annotations?
• Are there ways to gracefully make a more versus less specific annotation?
• Are there good ways to indicate degree of certainty?
• Useability
• Is there good (accessible and extensible) documentation?
  
• Is there a suitably diverse and continuous community for teaching new annotators / users?
  
• Are there good tools for annotating and using the annotations, and good community mechanisms for building/extending/sharing tools?