Hypertext
Hypertext is the presentation of information as a linked network of nodes which readers are free to navigate in a nonlinear fashion. It allows for multiple authors, a blurring of the author and reader functions, extended works with diffuse boundaries, and multiple reading paths.
The term "hypertext" was coined by Ted Nelson, who defined it in his self-published Literary Machines as "non-sequential writing" (0/2).
Many subsequent writers have taken hypertext to be a distinctly electronic technology-one which must involve a computer. For example, Janet Fiderio, in her overview "A Grand Vision," writes:
"Hypertext, at its most basic level, is a DBMS that lets you connect screens of information using associative links. At its most sophisticated level, hypertext is a software environment for collaborative work, communication, and knowledge acquisition. Hypertext products mimic the brain's ability to store and retrieve information by referential links for quick and intuitive access." (237)
Our definition does not limit itself to electronic text; hypertext is not inherently tied to technology, content, or medium. It is an organizational form which may just as readily be delivered on paper as electronically. Thus, Sterne's Tristram Shandy is no less a hypertext than Joyce's Afternoon. The latter we would term a hyperbook.
Other important definitions include those of Jakob Nielsen, the InterMedia development team, and Delany & Landow. Contrast these to the perspective of the information sciences.
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© 1993-2000 Christopher Keep, Tim McLaughlin, Robin
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hypertext
<hypertext> A term coined by Ted Nelson around 1965 for a collection of documents (or "nodes") containing cross-references or "links" which, with the aid of an interactive browser program, allow the reader to move easily from one document to another.
The extension of hypertext to include other media - sound, graphics, and video - has been termed "hypermedia", but is usually just called "hypertext", especially since the advent of the World-Wide Web and HTML.
(2000-09-10)
Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2001 Denis Howe
hy·per·text
Pronunciation Key (hi per-tekst ) n.
A computer-based text retrieval system that enables a user to access particular locations in webpages or other electronic documents by clicking on links within specific webpages or documents.
Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language,
Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
hypertext n:
machine-readable text that is not sequential but is organized so that related items of information are connected; "Let me introduce the word hypertext to mean a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper"--Ted Nelson
Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University