Prose Fiction and Modern Manuscripts Limitations and Possibilities of Text-Encoding for Electronic Editions

The hypertext edition, the hypermedia edition, the multimedia edition, the computer edition, the digital edition, the electronic edition are all synonymous labels for a concept without a definition. The use of “edition” in these labels presuppose a conventional understanding of that word, and is based on the implicit assumption that there is a general agreement on what an edition is. But there is no such thing. In textual studies we certainly mean “scholarly” edition whereas in ‘strict’ bibliography “the term ‘edition’ refers quite properly to the identifiably separate type-setting of any book, whether it is an edition in the text-critical sense or not” (Greetham 348). Any kind of available text, therefore, qualifies as an “edition”, and any kind of electronically available text qualifies to be labelled an “electronic edition”, just as any printed text can be called a “paper” or a “print edition”. The words “digital” and “electronic” only describe the materiality (as opposed to “print”) by which data comes before the reader, “computer” refers to the distribution and access medium (as opposed to “book” or “codex”), and “hypertext”, “hypermedia”, and “multimedia” hint at the functionality of the electronic product (as opposed to “linear”). As John Lavagnino pointed out in a report on a lecture I gave in London in 2000, “Ten years ago, it seemed sufficient to say that you were 2