I suspect that you will find a simple corollary
between length of tag, and date of first creation.
Back in the old days, there were limits on
the length of element names in SGML, and it
was felt akin to heresy to use more than 8 characters.
The TEI did not stick to that, but I suspect the
attitudes of the time were in the back of the authors'
mind.

Recently added tags have  been largely on the side
of longAndEasilyReadable, I'd say.

Then again I may be talking rubbish :-}

The other criterion, of course, is assumed
frequency of use. You only type "<editionStmt>"
once, but you type "<p>" a million times
(if you still do that old-fashioned typing thang
of course).

-- 
Sebastian Rahtz      

Information Manager, Oxford University Computing Services
13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6NN. Phone +44 1865 283431