Figure 1
Manicule© Jeremy Keith, used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence. CLOSE or ESC Figure 2
Simple Manicule A detail from Pindar, Pindari Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia. Callimachi hymni qui inueniuntur. Dionysius De situ orbis. Licophronis Alexandra, obscurum poema. Venetiis, In aedib. Aldi, et A. Asulani, soceri: 1513. Image courtesy of Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.CLOSE or ESC

While a manicule (fig. 1) may vary in size, shape, and quality, ranging from the simple outline of a hand (fig. 2) to a more detailed sketch featuring ornate sleeves and cuffs (fig. 3), the unifying characteristic is that of an extended index finger pointing towards a specific selection of text. There are several variations for the term manicule—such as “fist,” “pointer,” “digit,” “mutton fist,” or “indicule”—but the term manicule, which derives from the Latin maniculum (pl. manicula), or “little hand,” is the one most regularly employed by manuscript Manuscript any document in which the text is written by hand. See: Script CLOSE or ESC specialists, particularly experts in medieval and early modern paleography.1

A manicule is an indexical device created by or provided to readers to assist in the reading and re-reading of texts. The creator of a manicule can easily locate a passage of interest based on the presence and orientation of a manicule on a page Page one side of a leaf. See: Recto Leaf Verso PDF Pagina Layout Pagination CLOSE or ESC. The manicule can be drawn, printed (fig. 4), or digitally inserted into a text, and it can also facilitate shared as well as individual reading practices (for example, if a book is circulated amongst friends or colleagues).

Scholars working in the medieval and early modern periods regularly used manicules along with other symbols, including asterisks and trefoils (fig. 5) to index sections of a text, particularly those sections deemed noteworthy. But, as William Sherman explains, the manicule “may have been the most common symbol produced both for and by readers in the margins Margin white space surrounding the area taken up by printed matter. See: Back Margins Head Foot Manicule Marginalia CLOSE or ESC of manuscripts and printed books” from the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, and its use and significance evolved alongside trends in manuscript culture and later printing and publishing.2

The use of the manicule has permeated so deeply into our culture that, despite being centuries old, its impact and influence is still seen today, perhaps especially so in digital technology. Whereas in the past the manicule lay stationary on the page to indicate interesting passages, today’s mutable digital interfaces offer the opportunity for instant, context-specific transformation.3 Take for example the typical computer cursor: mouse over one area of text, and the cursor appears as an arrow; mouse over a hyperlink and the cursor transforms into a hand with an extended index finger—much like a manicule—pointing towards an area of interest.

Figure 3
Ornate Manicule A detail from an antiphonary/breviary, possibly from Florence, after 1400. Image courtesy of Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.CLOSE or ESC Figure 4
Printed Manicule Detail from Terence, Terentius cum tribus commentis: uidelicet Io. Cal[phurnii] Gvido. Iv[venalis] Donatus. Mediolani, Impressum est per I.A. Scinzenzeler, [Impensis] I. de Legnano: 1501. Image courtesy of Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.CLOSE or ESC Figure 5
A Cluster of Trefoils A detail from Robert Gaguin, Compendium Roberti Gaguini Francorum gestis : ab ipso recognitum & auctum. Paris: 1500. Image courtesy of Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.CLOSE or ESC

Figure 6
della Porta's Cryptogramsfrom Gianbattista della Porta, De occvltis literarvm notis, sev, Artis animi sensa occulte alijs significandi, aut ab alijs significata expiscandi enodandique [libri IV] (Montisbeligardi: 1593). Image courtesy of Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.CLOSE or ESC

The history of the manicule is very much a history of appropriation. From its earliest uses in manuscript and incunabula Incunabula books printed before 1500. CLOSE or ESC to its use in advertising and desktop computing, the manicule has been a persistent, albeit changing, representation of human engagements with cultural textual artifacts. The manicule speaks to the materiality of texts, as well as to our active encounters therein. As demonstrated by a variety of examples, the manicule is simultaneously metaphorical and utilitarian, ephemeral Ephemera broadsides, pamphlets, advertisements and other forms of printing considered more disposable than books. See: Broadside CLOSE or ESC and enduring.

The metaphorical and informational value of the human hand is extensive. Throughout history, images of hands and fingers have been variously evoked in religious writing, mnemonics, cryptography, and art. For instance, in the biblical book of Exodus, we encounter the finger as a divine metaphor for the act of writing: “And he gaue vnto Moses, when hee had made an end of communing with him vpon mount Sinai, two tables of Testimonie, tables of stone, written with the finger of God.”4 This image of God’s finger, in the act of writing, and later indicating towards an authoritative text, is analogous to the manicule in manuscript and incunable texts where it persists as a directive that reveals the authority or significance of a particular piece of text. The divine hand appears not only in the text of biblical literature, but also in later pictorial representations in print. In Giambattista della Porta’s De occvltis literarvm notis (fig. 6), the pointing finger of God is depicted at the centre of a cryptographic volvelle Volvelle consists of one or more layers of parchment or paper discs or other segments fastened to a leaf, allowing for each individual layer to be rotated independently of the other components. See the ArchBook essay Volvelles for more details. CLOSE or ESC. Della Porta’s depiction of God’s hand—a close resemblance to the marginal manicule—elucidates some of the characteristic features of this piece of readerly marginalia Marginalia anything appearing in the margins of a text, including printed and manuscript notes, and decorations. See: Margin CLOSE or ESC. Beyond the authoritative act of pointing, this manicule-like image physically engages in the act of deciphering. Similarly, readerly manicules are often drawn to elucidate and decode a particular element of the text at hand.

The manicule is also inextricably bound up with the culture of medieval scholarship. The relationship between the physical act of writing and the cognitive act of memorization is substantial. As Mary Carruthers notes in her study of memory in medieval culture, The Book of Memory, “Children learned to write as part of reading/memorizing, inscribing their memories in the act of inscribing their tablets.”5 The simultaneity of writing and memorization is undoubtably one of the primary motivating factors for readerly marginalia. It is this underlying process of memorization that exists beneath the surface of readerly annotation. In mnemonics too, the hand plays an important role, and not merely as a vehicle in the physical act of writing. In the late medieval period, the hand was used explicitly as a mnemonic device in various fields. Particularly in music the hand facilitated the memorization of complex musical scales or gamuts. As Karol Berger writes, “the principal form under which trained musicians imagined their gamut was the so-called Guidonian ‘hand’ (manus), the representation of the gamut on the palm of the left hand.”6 The use of the hand as a mnemonic device provides the intrinsic rationale for the manicule and its role in patterns of reading. The close ties between the brain and the hand in the development of knowledge in the early modern period have also been elegantly documented by Claire Richter Sherman in her catalogue Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe.7

The manicule as a form of readerly marginalia is most common in the medieval and Renaissance periods. The manicule's popularity amongst Renaissance readers demonstrates not only readers’ active engagement with texts available at that time, but also a yearning to appropriate and adapt the content of those texts. In many cases, the popular texts of the Renaissance—both religious works and secular writing passed down from antiquity—represented a tangible connection to pre-medieval knowledge. For Renaissance readers, these texts commanded a body of knowledge within which they desperately wanted to situate themselves. Much like the commonplace book Commonplace Book a book which serves as a collection of (generally) one individual's notes, quotations, Bible verses, and other snippets of information. CLOSE or ESC—a popular reader’s journal made up of commentary on topics such as literature, mathematics, and philosophy—the manicule represented a connection to prized historical texts and the knowledge they contained. By indexing, cataloguing, and making meaning of textual artifacts, Renaissance readers were effectively appropriating the vast body of knowledge around them, and making it their own. To this end, they employed manicules and other marginalia, along with tabs, tipped-in pages, and indices, as a practical, but also highly performative, means of appropriating texts.8

Figure 7
Printer's Fistfrom Gianbattista della Porta. De occvltis literarvm notis, sev, Artis animi sensa occulte alijs significandi, aut ab alijs significata expiscandi enodandique [libri IV] (Montisbeligardi: 1593), p. 188. Image courtesy of Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.CLOSE or ESC

Printers, particularly in the incunable Incunabula books printed before 1500. CLOSE or ESC period, were very much concerned with the replication of manuscript forms and aesthetics. To this end, early printers attempted to replicate rubrication through the use of various woodcuts Woodcut a printed illustration made from a design cut into a block of wood. See: Cut CLOSE or ESC and inks, and often endeavored to rubricate and illuminate Illuminated a manuscript or early printed book where the margins or initial letters are decorated with flowers or other designs See: Historiated CLOSE or ESC printed texts by hand. The printer’s inclination to replicate manuscript forms extends into the realm of marginal annotation as well. In his Encyclopedia of the Book, G. A. Glaister suggests an editorial function for the printer’s fist: “As with other typographic conventions this was taken from scribal practice, carefully drawn hands pointing to a new paragraph being found in early 12th century (Spanish) manuscripts.”9 In this usage, the printer’s fist performs the same function as a pilcrow (¶), signalling editorial practice in addition to marking specific textual references (fig. 7). The printer’s adoption of the manicule constitutes an expansion of the physical borders of the printed text-block. Increasingly, printers utilized fists not only as decorated pilcrows, but also in conjunction with authoritative commentary to be included as marginal glosses. Printers of the incunable period appropriated not only the manicule as a distinct textual feature but also its coinciding marginal notes, and the evolving interplay between the text-block and surrounding blank space. Effectively, they mimicked both manuscript aesthetics as well as current reading practices.

Early printers incorporated the manicule into their type-cases Type Case a storage container for sorting loose type. Type was organized by sort into small compartments within a wooden tray, and during the hand-press era the orientation of the compartments followed one of two orders, or "lays"; the single lay arranged capital letters along the top of a single large case, with the lower-case letters in the compartments below. The divided lay employed two smaller cases, in which capital letters occupied one case and lower-case letters and punctuation occupied the other. See: Foul Case Sort Type CLOSE or ESC; however, it seems they also incorporated it into their unique professional colloquialisms as well. In particular, the term “mutton space” may originate in the terminology for units of measurement commonly used in printing shops. In typography, the spacing between letters is often designated as either an "en-" or "em-space" named after the "N" and "M" sorts which are of the same width.10 Printer’s colloquialisms for these spacing units included “nut-space” and “mutton-space” so as to avoid miscommunication amidst the noise of the printing shop. These colloquialisms, then, suggest that Sherman is correct in identifying and attempting to preserve the historical terms associated with the manicule, specifically “mutton fist”: “even if we can no longer imagine what a pointing hand has to do with […] sheep.”11 The term “mutton fist” may indeed reveal more about the printer’s appropriation of the manicule than is currently known.

Figure 8
Manicule on Signage"Quincy Manicule (Chicago, IL)," © takomabibelot, used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic licence. CLOSE or ESC

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, manicules entered a new stage in their lengthy history of appropriation and adaptation. At this time, the manicule became adapted for use by a burgeoning advertising industry, coming to play, as Sherman notes, “a crucial role in the visual vocabulary of advertising.”12 As in manuscript culture, early printing conventions, and Renaissance reading practices previously, the manicules featured on signposts and post bills were intended to direct their reader. These manicules did not direct towards texts, but, rather, towards places and events. Rather than being presented as a complement to text, the manicule increasingly came to be used in lieu of text. It had effectively become the text (fig. 8).

The manicule, as a visual symbol, has also persisted into modern digital environments, most notably in personal computing and on the World Wide Web. Peter Stallybrass considers the evolution of reading practices and textual navigation in a book chapter titled “Books and Scrolls: Navigating the Bible,” where he writes, “The navigation of computers is still imagined in the visual language that was elaborated in the fifteenth century for the navigation of books: the language of the index finger and of its prosthetic form, the bookmark.”13 In this modern context, the manicule acts simultaneously as an interface between the reader and the textual-visual environment of the screen, as well as a text in and of itself. Particularly in hypertext Hypertext any system which allows the connection and navigation of computer documents through links. CLOSE or ESC environments, the digital manicule reveals interactive objects, or gateways into new texts. As a result, the manicule replaces directive text in a similar fashion to the manicules found on nineteenth- and twentieth-century signposts. However, this is not to say that the manicule has somehow become divorced from its earliest forms and usages. The underlying mechanics of the scribal and early print manicule are present in their digital counterparts. The directive and indexical functions of the manicule have persisted to some degree. When scrolling through a page of hypertext links we are confronted by structural and aesthetic systems of information organization and retrieval that are not far removed from the acts of using one’s finger to flip through the pages of a book, or of skimming an index by moving one’s finger from one entry to another.

It may be surprising for some to find the manicule—a textual feature rooted in manuscript and early print culture—acting as a ubiquitous interface between human and computer. Peter Stallybrass seems to echo this feeling of surprise when he writes; “Yet my Macintosh computer still uses a little hand to travel around the screen and a pointing finger.”14 However, the adaptation of the manicule in digital environments is not anachronistic. The manicule speaks to broader, more universal ways of understanding, creating, and physically interfacing with textual artefacts.

Touch Interfaces

In the afterword to Used Books, his critically acclaimed examination of Renaissance readers and reading practices, Sherman provides brief but pointed insight into the possible future of textual interaction. Sherman focuses his discussion around an image of a girl interacting with digital facsimiles of rare books at a touch-screen kiosk located at the National Library of Scotland. For Sherman, the girl’s pointing finger is reminiscent of “the Renaissance student’s manicules […] and of the long-standing links between pointing, reading, and learning.”15

The recent and pervasive movement towards touch-based interfaces, particularly in digital reading devices, underscores the cognitive-material relationships between touch, text, and human cognition to which Sherman alludes in his afterword. Indeed, the experience of reading within a touch interface affirms the fact that texts are not only closely bound to our sense of sight, but are also inseparable from our tactile faculties. These interfaces represent modest initial attempts at modelling the material dimensions of printed books, and of extending that materiality with the use of finger taps, pinches, and other gestures. As Lisa Jardine argues, “more is required to satisfy the dedicated reader than replicating the content and appearance of a printed book, or emulating the action of ‘turning pages’ using a tap on a touch-sensitive screen.”16

However, it is also important to recognize the symbolic and informational value of certain interface elements that have been adopted from Renaissance reading habits. Tabs, manicules, and bookmarks are all elements that have been appropriated from the rich history of the book for use within current graphical user interfaces. Despite this general trend, the potential usefulness of the manicule has not been fully explored within today's digital reading environment: As Martyn Jessop notes, “Graphic aids to thinking are not new, but the emergence of digital technology has created a new medium for these tools that provides extended functionality and many new opportunities for development.”17 Although interface design, both in its past and in its present manifestations, has certainly looked to print and manuscript culture for inspiration, it has stopped short of exploring how new technologies create new conditions for the material aspects of texts.

As we have mentioned earlier, manicules persist in digital environments as computer cursors. Manicules have also caught the interest of designers of digital reading environments and are slowly becoming incorporated into digital reading practice. The best example of this return to the manicule’s original function is presented within iAnnotate, an iPad application created by Aji LLC.

Figure 9
iAnnotate ManiculeFind out more about the app at the iAnnotate homepage CLOSE or ESC

iAnnotate is a PDF PDF stands for Portable Document Format, an open file format developed by Adobe which is independent of the parent program. There are a range of programs available to open these documents some of which are also open source (JISC Digital Media Glossary). See: Page Display Type Layout CLOSE or ESC viewer application for the Apple iPad. Amongst its major features is a complete annotation system, including the ability to add stylized manicules to PDF documents. These manicules (fig. 9) may be dropped onto the page, moved around, and resized.18 Their symbolic value within this modern interface remains undiluted from its Renaissance origins. In fact, the manicule takes on even greater symbolic value when we consider the mode of interaction that is presented by touch interfaces. The reader’s fingers are once again the point of contact between the reader and the text. Because touch interfaces eliminate the mediating layer occupied by keyboards, computer mice, and other input devices, parts of the reader’s body, specifically the fingers, are once again in direct contact with the text as the reader points, gestures, and leaves marks on the text.

iAnnotate represents but an initial attempt at appropriating and extending the functionality of a very old textual feature. We might approach the iAnnotate manicule as a type of modelling experiment, where the functionality and features of this style of interaction are still being fleshed out. For instance, though it is resizable, and orientable in the sense that it can be moved continuously around its axis, the manicule cannot be mirrored so as to point towards the left. Despite this lack of functionality, iAnnotate has demonstrated the value of looking at textual objects and their histories of interaction. Particularly within touch interfaces, attention to these types of interactions promises to extend our understanding of textual environments and what we really do in them.

Touch interfaces constitute environments where we may both replicate and extend the rich history of textual interaction that has been preserved and documented by the bibliographic field. The manicule in particular, as a highly flexible textual feature, has the power to illuminate our understanding of textual interaction and of the ways in which human cognitive and tactile faculties coalesce in the act of reading.

Readerly Visual Annotation in the Digital Age
Kaitlyn Price

The manicule is both a visual and personal form of annotation. Whether printed by the author or inserted by the reader, the manicule indicates, with a static symbol, important information within the greater framework of the text. Though the image of the manicule in modern writing is infrequent, it lives on primarily through its function in the digital age. Within the ebook market, dominated currently by Kindle and Kobo, evolving methods of personalized annotation for readers echo the visual gesture of the pointed hand. In the digital environment of the ebook–which has flourished and developed since its initial pilot in the 1990s–updates and new models have changed the way readers interact with important passages, including features like index tabs within the device. However, interaction in these digital environments complicates Sherman’s idea that readers’ manicules are “recognizable as their marks”19 because they transform annotative functions into a set of predefined choices. Social annotation introduces a new layer to individual annotation by integrating other readers’ marks into the digital platform. Functions within the ebook share aspects of the manicule’s nature, such as bookmarking and leaving notes; however, highlighting is the most visual and personalizable form of annotation and relates most closely to the manicule. These features have the potential to ease or complicate the annotation process but ultimately create new routes for interaction with texts.

The first uses of the manicule were through either author or scribe, as Keith Houston points out, in texts such as the Domesday Book20 from 1086; however, shortly after, the reader became just as prominent as a user. When an author places a manicule, the intention is to attract a reader’s eyes to a valuable point of the page, influencing what the reader may deem important. When a reader produces a manicule in a text with no preexisting annotations, their only influence is the text itself and the ideas extracted directly from the passages. Houston foregrounds the reader’s value: “the manicule’s story is intimately bound to the reader’s practice of annotating books.”21 Ebook readers center reader experience through the convenience of a digital platform that is both mobile and customizable; their interfaces alter the reader’s ability to personalize an annotation’s appearance, but the functions remain the same.

The Kindle and Kobo are digital readers that mimic the look and feel of an actual page but ultimately have the same touch capabilities as a tablet or smartphone. When opening an ebook on either device, the user can tap to “flip” pages while reading from a screen that is much less harsh on the eyes than any regular smart device. Within the wide range of interactions in an ebook, bookmarking is one annotative function the reader can utilize. Kindle and Kobo both have the bookmark function, which the reader activates when holding the top right hand corner of the page for a few seconds. Kindle’s bookmark appears as a ribbon-shaped marker, while Kobo’s animates the corner of the page folding over. In a separate tab, all bookmarked pages are indexed in chronological order. Although these bookmarks assist the reader in tagging a part of the text, they do not precisely align with “the primary functions served by the manicule … [which are] to clarify the organization of the text, and … help readers find their way around [the] structure and put their hands on passages of particular interest.”22 Bookmarks fulfill the first two functions of organization and navigation but do not link to specific passages. This is where highlighting becomes the preferred annotation method, as readers can select smaller portions of text which also appear in the index. Readers have more flexibility with highlighting; their option to select any portion of the text is analogous to the personalization and specificity of the manicule.

In an ebook environment, highlighting is the most enriching form of personalized annotation within the platform. To perform the highlight function in either Kindle or Kobo, a reader needs only to hold down the beginning of the passage they wish to select. They then can drag their finger down to highlight, which prompts a pop-up menu, permitting the reader to choose to highlight the passage amongst other interactive options. Once “highlight” is selected, the passage will be drawn out in a different shade or a different colour in models such as the Kobo Libra Colour or the Kindle Colorsoft. Altogether, the function is seamless and simple for readers of any background. The highlight option additionally allows notes to be attached, mimicking the marginal notes of paper text. This gesture is relevant in terms of “the most common function of the manicule [which] was simply [to point] to a passage that someone involved in producing or using the book considered worth noting.”23 Just as the manicule helps recall essential arguments or topics through its pointed gesture, the highlight aids the reader in relocating lines for the same purpose. The highlights often appear in the same index as the bookmarks, allowing readers to scroll through their annotations. Within the index, the highlighted passages appear as extracts from the original page. Not only can the reader view the highlight within the index but also tap on it to go back to the location of the passage within the text. Indexing highlights is far more convenient than indexing bookmarks since indexed highlights let the reader see the specific passage and any attached notes. In contrast, the bookmark only draws the reader back to the page.

Varied models of ebooks allow further access to personalized annotation options. The Kobo Libra Colour, released in 2024, is designed for a more expansive annotation system by integrating colour for text and highlighting and a stylus for note-taking. The introduction of colour gives the reader the autonomy to assign particular hues to their highlighted passage, thus adding personality and individuality through the selection of different colours. With the availability of colour, readers can assign varied shades to different themes or topics, contributing to what Houston describes as the “intensely personal nature of the mark.”24 Through colour-coded highlights, the index takes on a new life. Readers can scroll through the index and look for their colour-coded topics through a convenient system that more closely resembles the function of the manicule, which was often “deployed by authors and editors as a means of giving order to their printed texts.” Highlighting in the ebook’s index recalls how manicules were connected to manuscript indexes. This model of the Kobo additionally provides a stylus so that readers can write and mark up passages, as they might a print or manuscript book. Like a pencil or pen, the stylus allows the reader to interact with a text tangibly. Tapping and pulling across the screen is also tangible; however, the reader is more aware of the digital surface because they swipe a screen rather than a page. The stylus allows more freedom to add meaningful marks like arrows, circles, underlines, and perhaps even manicules. Houston emphasizes the interactive nature of the print book: “[it] was second nature for a book’s owner to brand it, to annotate and embellish it as they read; to underline pithy phrases and fill the margins with notes.”25 This Kobo model, with its customizable annotation functions, allows readers to connect to their text, like the readers in Houston’s description. Although many ebook models support personal annotation, models such as these echo the multipurpose signifier that is the manicule.

The manicule holds meaning for either the author or the reader who placed it; however, it also influences readers who come across manicules placed by previous owners of the text. Sherman describes this influence as “the uncanny power to conjure up the bodies of dead writers and readers.”26 In the ebook, however, these annotators may not be bodies of the past. Social annotation in digital platforms is consistently updated online with reader’s marks and comments from both the past and present. This type of annotation takes various digital forms, from websites to plugins and extensions; in the ebook reader, specifically the Kindle, there is a feature titled “popular highlights.” Before a reader creates a highlight, they can also see that other people have highlighted the same passage, which additionally provides a quantity of how many others found the same lines significant. This feature can be turned off if the reader chooses; however, it provides fascinating insights as it appears before the reader adds their own highlights. Through popular highlights, the reader can understand what others deem most important within a text, potentially granting them new understandings as they inquire why others have chosen a particular passage. These social annotations appear as a lightly dotted underline rather than a complete highlight but gesture to a specific passage, much as some manicules exist before reading. In their study on annotation in ebooks, Mark Jensen and Lauren Scharff suggest that popular highlights are helpful in an academic setting: “increased access to and sharing of annotations is central to the benefit of the e-text environment.”27 Their conversation bridges ebook annotation from personal reading to academic reading, focusing on digital annotation, especially in a social context. Extrapolating from Jensen and Scharff’s ideas, the Kindle’s popular highlights may be of some benefit if expanded to digital textbooks or academic readings. Social highlights are similar to discovering another reader’s manicule in a text; the reader’s curiosity about the larger audience and their perspectives on a specific passage potentially can expand their understanding of the text.

Manicule functions today would not exist without the reader’s participation. As Jensen and Scharff point out, “critical readers of primary texts have typical foundational goals: they aim to discover an author’s central message, thesis, or narrative. But critical readers also want more.”28 This desire for more interaction in reading existed well before the ebook. Kindle and Kobo’s markets continually enhance individual readers’ annotation habits with each update and model, thus demonstrating how a practice from paper takes time and response to transform into a digital practice. The manicule primarily lives on in these ebooks through functional equivalents such as bookmarking and highlighting. Like the curious hand, highlighting gestures to lines of personal importance while organizing the text through an index, and assists the reader by restructuring the text according to their ideas. The annotative functions of Ebook readers enable interpretation and deeper understanding of the text that engages readers’ needs, which is why the essential functions of the manicule persist in digital culture.

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1 Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), 44-45; William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 33-34. 2 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 29. 3 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 40. 4 Exod. 31:18, King James Bible. 5 Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 195. 6 Karol Berger, "The Guidonian Hand," in The Medieval Craft of Memory, ed. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 75-76. 7 Claire Richter Sherman, Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2000). 8 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 35, 208. 9 G. A. Glaister, Encyclopedia of the Book (London: Oak Knoll Press, 2001). Qtd in W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 32-33. 10 David Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (New York: Garland, 1994), 114. 11 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 34. 12 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 39. 13 Peter Stallybrass, "Books and Scrolls: Navigating the Bible," in Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies, ed. Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 46; see also Peter Stallybrass, "The Book as Computer" (Lecture for the Digital Humanities Speaker's Series Future Knowledge: Prospects for a Digital Era, University of South Carolina, April 17, 2009. https://sc.edu/about/centers/digital_humanities/future_knowledge_archive/stallybrass_videopage.php, no longer available). 14 Stallybrass, "Books and Scrolls," 46. 15 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 179. 16 Lisa Jardine, "Page-turning passion" (BBC, January 8, 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8447996.stm). 17 Martyn Jessop, "Digital Visualization as a Scholarly Activity," Literary and Linguistic Computing 23, no. 3 (2008), 281, emphasis added. 18 https://www.folia.com/iannotate. 19 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 52. 20 Houston, Shady Characters, 172. 21 Houston, Shady Characters, 168. 22 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 41. 23 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 43. 24 Houston, Shady Characters, 170. 25 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 27. 26 Houston, Shady Characters, 170. 27 W. H. Sherman, Used Books, 29. 28 Mark Jensen and Lauren Scharff, “Using E-Book Annotations to Develop Deep Reading,” Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, September 11, 2014, 83–86, https://doi.org/10.14434/jotlt.v3n2.12872.. 29 Jensen and Scharff, “Using E-Book Annotations to Develop Deep Reading,” 83.

Berger, Karol. "The Guidonian Hand." In The Medieval Craft of Memory: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, edited by Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski, 71-82. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Clemens, Raymond and Timothy Graham. Introduction to Manuscript Studies. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Glaister, G. A. Encyclopedia of the Book. London: Oak Knoll Press, 2001.

Greetham, David. Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. New York: Garland, 1994.

Jardine, Lisa. "Page-turning passion." BBC, January 8, 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8447996.stm.

Jensen, Mark and Lauren Scharff, “Using E-Book Annotations to Develop Deep Reading,” Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, September 11, (2014): 83–86. Accessed March 18, 2025. https://doi.org/10.14434/jotlt.v3n2.12872.

Jessop, Martyn. "Digital Visualization as a Scholarly Activity." Literary and Linguistic Computing 23, no. 3 (2008): 281-93.

King James Bible. Literature Online.

Sherman, Claire Richter. Writing on Hands: Memory and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2000.

Sherman, William H. Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

Stallybrass, Peter. "Books and Scrolls: Navigating the Bible," in Books and Readers in Early Modern England: Material Studies. Edited by Jennifer Andersen and Elizabeth Sauer. Afterword by Stephen Orgel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Stallybrass, Peter. "The Book as Computer." Lecture for the Digital Humanities Speaker's Series Future Knowledge: Prospects for a Digital Era, University of South Carolina, April 17, 2009. https://sc.edu/about/centers/digital_humanities/future_knowledge_archive/stallybrass_videopage.php (no longer available).