Writing electronically. There is much to be said in favor of lowering the claims made for what electronic editions can or cannot do. The transformative power of &ampampquote-ditions" is sometimes wildly exaggerated, and in the collision of authorial hyperbole and readerly skepticism it is easy to lose sight of the limited but significant advances that electronic editions offer to readers in search of better understanding. Any edition of a text, whether printed or electronic, rests on ancient technologies of reading and writing, which in turn rest on evolved human capacities for processing language. It is worth repeating the obvious point that the core activities of reading and writing in a narrow sense have remained and will remain quite unaffected by information technology. Although virtually all writers have come to depend on the convenience of word processors, it is doubtful whether word processors have on average produced faster or better writers. As for reading, the computer industry has only begun to design reader-friendly devices, and it will be some time before any computer screen can compete with a moderately well designed printed page. Even when it does, it will not transform the act of reading

There is much to be said in favor of lowering the claims made for what electronic editions can or cannot do. The transformative power of &ampampquote-ditions" is sometimes wildly exaggerated, and in the collision of authorial hyperbole and readerly skepticism it is easy to lose sight of the limited but significant advances that electronic editions offer to readers in search of better understanding. Any edition of a text, whether printed or electronic, rests on ancient technologies of reading and writing, which in turn rest on evolved human capacities for processing language. It is worth repeating the obvious point that the core activities of reading and writing in a narrow sense have remained and will remain quite unaffected by information technology. Although virtually all writers have come to depend on the convenience of word processors, it is doubtful whether word processors have on average produced faster or better writers. As for reading, the computer industry has only begun to design reader-friendly devices, and it will be some time before any computer screen can compete with a moderately well designed printed page. Even when it does, it will not transform the act of reading