The other extrinsic element which used to have great significance for diplomatists, but progressively lost it, is the script1. While it is the task of paleography to determine what type of script is proper to an era and an environment, it is the task of

The other extrinsic element which used to have great significance for diplomatists, but progressively lost it, is the script¹. While it is the task of paleography to determine what type of script is proper to an era and an environment, it is the task of diplomatics to examine other characteristics of the script, such as the layout of the writing with respect to the physical form of the document, the presence of different hands or types of writing in the same document, the correspondence between paragraphs and conceptual sections of the text, type of punctuation, abbreviations, initialisms, ink, erasures, corrections, etc. With the invention of the printing press, and later, of the typewriter, some of these characteristics became irrelevant to the purpose of diplomatic criticism. The need for careful examination of these characteristics is arising again, however, thanks to the advent of new technology. Computer software, for example, may be considered as part of the extrinsic 'script,' because it determines the layout and articulation of the discourse, and can provide information about provenance, procedures, processes, uses, modes of transmission and, last but not least, authenticity.