Not to be difficult, but as I skim these definitions of hypertext (and I apologize for only skimming, but I should be unpacking boxes as I type-- we moved and all), I have to wonder what *isn't* hypertext. I have sympathy with calling (for example) *Ulysses* (sp?) or the poetry of Pound or a lot of "traditional" literature *hypertextual* in the sense that it can be read as hypertext, but that doesn't make it hypertext, right? I mean, I can read the phonebook as a hypertext, too-- indeed, my "reading" of the phonebook (or any encyclopedic text) is largely the same sort of reading I do when I'm looking something up on the web.

I'm not getting at anything that is too revolutionary in thought, I don't think. I'm just suggesting that defining anything is only as useful as defining what it is not.

I like the connection to 'lectronic writing because it defines some things that *aren't* hypertext, personally. But what else doesn't qualify as hypertext?

--Steve

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Steven D. Krause * Assistant Professor, English
614G Pray-Harrold Hall * Eastern Michigan University
Ypsilanti, MI 48197 * http://www.online.emich.edu/~skrause