Manuscript

A manuscript (Latin manu scriptus, "written by hand"), strictly speaking, is any written document that is put down by hand, in contrast to being printed or reproduced some other way. Information may be hand-recorded in other ways than in manuscripts, as inscriptions that are chiselled upon a hard material or scratched (the original meaning of graffiti) as with a knife point in plaster or with a stylus on a waxed tablet, (the way Romans made notes), or are in cuneiform writing, impressed with a pointed stylus in a flat tablet of unbaked clay.

See also

• Scriptorium
• Codex
• List of manuscripts
• List of Hiberno-Saxon illustrated manuscripts
• Historical Documents
• Preservation Issues