This handbook has been produced as a result of an initiative by the Commission of the European Union in February 1993 to launch, under the auspices of the DG XIII Linguistic Research and Engineering (LRE) Programme, a project aimed at accelerating the provision of common functional specifications for the development of large-scale speech and language resources within Europe. The initiative became known as ``EAGLES'' - the Expert Advisory Group on Language Engineering Standards - and it attracted a budget from the European Commission of approximately 1.25 MECU over a period covering almost three years.