John Tolva (1994) compares hypertext to a modern illuminated manuscript that allows for the "visual manipulation of text blocks (called lexias) and graphical depiction of structural features" (p. 7).

Ledgerwood (1996) defines it as a body of text that can be viewed or accessed in a number of different ways by a reader or user.

Conklin (1987) described it as "non-sequential reading and writing...allowing authors to link information, create paths through a corpus of related material, annotate existing texts, create notes and point readers to either bibliographical data or the body of the referenced text."

Graham Storrs (1993) writes that in its simplest form it is "a set of nodes connected together by undifferentiated links. Each node is an unstructured piece of text or graphics (or both) and each link is an undirectional association between two nodes" (p. 131)

Joseph A. Feustle (1991) compares hypertext to a piece of woven cloth. "...hypertext is as new as computers yet as traditional as the etymology of the word text itself: a texture of threads that reach out by means of the computer program and connect original works, critical studies, bibliographies, and historical backgrounds" (p. 299).

Nancy G. Patterson
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From Kurt Bouman:

Basically, hypertext is the idea of linking texts, but, as the explanation below demonstrates, the theoretical ideas behind it can be quite complex, and get into a critique of knowledge and expression on many levels.

Below, I've quoted George P. Landow, from his introductory essay in his _Hyper/Text/Theory_ (Johns Hopkins, 1994). His book is a collection of essays on hypertext theory, and the introduction, well, introduces the more complex (to me) aspects of the new writing.

"Hypertext, an information technology consisting of individual blocks of text, or lexias, and the electronic links that join them, has much in common with recent literary and critical theory. For example, like much recent work by poststructuralists, such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, hypertext reconceives conventional, long-held assumptions about authors and readers and the texts they write and read.

Electronic linking, which provides one of the defining features of hypertext, also embodies Julia Kristeva's notions of intertextuality, Mikhail Bakhtin's emphasis upon multivocality, Michel Foucault's conceptions of networks of power, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's ideas or rhizomatic, 'nomad thought.'

The very idea of hypertextuality seems to have taken form at approximately the same time that poststructuralism developed, but their points of convergence have a closer relation than that of mere contingency, for both grow out of dissatisfation with the related phenomena of the printed book and hierarchical thought. For this reason even thinkers like Helene Cixous, who seem resolutely opposed to technology, can call for ideas, such as l'ecriture feminine, that appear to find their instantiation in this new information technology."
(from page 1).

Kurt Bouman