I. Extensible Markup Language and the Birth of E-textnology

Context. With the recent advent of XML and its attendant suite of technologies, scholars have at their disposal a sophisticated set of text analysis and manipulation tools that do not demand mastery of overly-abstract programming languages. Electronic Texts, or e-texts, can have handles and/or topic "markers" built into, and continuously added to them according to a scholar's own-or a collaborative group's-research agenda throughout the course of their career.

Appropriately, then, we have before us the era of electronic text technology, or "e-textnology." This new development builds upon the very earliest and most consistent threads of computer technology development. It derives from one of the most consistent and unchanging underpinnings of the otherwise always-changing world of digital technology, the syntax of electronic text markup.⁴

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