Before the invention of the printing press, books were produced by hand. When the text of a book is copied this way, textual errors can creep in, and a text that's been copied again and again can contain many such errors. By comparing different copies of a work, textual critics try to figure out where the copyists went wrong and restore the text to its original form so that modern readers can again enjoy the correct versions of ancient texts. When a class performs textual analysis of a poem, however, they are looking closely at its individual words and phrases in an effort to determine the poem's meanings.
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the WebWhile Donald Trump doesn’t yet have a physical location for his presidential library, the National Archives have collected 5,324 cubic feet of textual records, the smallest amount of all presidential libraries. Adrienne Tong, WSJ, 26 Aug. 2022 The Clinton administration generated the largest number of traditional holdings for his presidential library, with more than 38,000 cubic feet of textual and audiovisual records and 106,000 artifacts, according to the National Archives. Josh Meyer, USA TODAY, 10 Aug. 2022 And that's this idea of originalism, and reading the constitution as the founding fathers might have seen it, looking at its text and not really looking at extra textual elements. Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 6 July 2022 Whether visual, textual or multimedia, all relevant content must align with the overarching strategy that is developed in the early research phase. Alana Sandel, Forbes, 30 June 2022 Technological cleverness applied to reams of real-life textual data has collided with a distinctive quirk of human nature. Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 14 June 2022 Icke’s textual choices and adjustments have been collated in a new edition of the play, which was edited by Ilinca Radulian, an associate director on the Almeida production. Rebecca Mead, The New Yorker, 6 June 2022 The 20th-century workplace was dominated by textual communications—from faxes to emails and texts. Alexey Aylarov, Forbes, 3 June 2022 Charles Epp, a University of Kansas professor whose research has focused on police stops, also weighs in on how pre-textual stops could be harmful to residents of a city and its police force. Olivia Mitchell, cleveland, 18 May 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Middle English textuel, from Medieval Latin textus text