In our experience as students, or even as casual readers, it is not uncommon to consult—or at least to browse cursively—books containing a text, whether literary or of another nature, accompanied by some form of exegetical apparatus or other aids to reading: an introduction, an accessus ad auctores, commentarial notes of varying length and systematicity, or iconographic material. It suffices to recall the pedagogical practice embedded in the standard educational curriculum, from primary school through university-level study: one example, among many possible, familiar to anyone who has received any form of higher education in Italy, is undoubtedly the reading of Dante’s Commedia. Likewise, it is not unusual for a commented text — whether in Italian or in another language, classical or modern — to find its audience among general readers. Limiting our focus to literary texts, more complex works, particularly poetry (both lyrical and narrative), often require, even in editions not aimed at a specialist readership, some form of commentary. Even less challenging works, printed in editions not explicitly intended for scholars, are sometimes accompanied by brief notes, even if added in a sporadic or non-systematic fashion. The typologies of layout adopted for text and commentary in today’s printed volumes vary considerably, though they can broadly be reduced to two principal categories: footnotes on each page and endnotes appended to the conclusion of the text or of a section thereof. In more complex cases — typically found in editions intended for close reading and for more specialised audiences — these two formats may coexist, each fulfilling distinct functions. Remaining within the domain of classical literature, we might cite several prestigious European series in which philological variants and occasionally brief annotations are presented as footnotes, while more extensive and thematically diverse notes are placed at the end of the volume to complement the tools available to the reader. In Italy, the volumes published by the Fondazione Valla offer a representative example; in France, the editions of the Collection Budé fulfil a similar role. This same layout strategy is not uncommon in editions of Italian literary classics or of modern works in other languages.

A further, less common form of commentary — typically reserved for research and specialised scholarly use — is the continuous commentary published separately from the main text. Among the many possible examples, one might cite the monumental English-language commentary on the Iliad, edited by G. S. Kirk and published in multiple volumes. Similarly, other specialist scholarly tools — such as dedicated lexicons for particular authors or individual works, or encyclopaedias focused on specific figures and/or texts (e.g., the Enciclopedia Virgiliana, the Enciclopedia Dantesca, etc.) — are also published independently.

Finally, another aspect worthy of consideration in relation to the ‘spatiality’ of the text/paratext relationship is the hypertextual dimension of reading and consultation to which we have become increasingly accustomed in recent years. The layout of a website — or of any digital text, even those of a highly specialised nature — follows principles and strategies of mise en page that are markedly different from those of print. All the formats briefly mentioned above can, in practice, be ‘collapsed’ into a single system of hyperlinks, forming a potentially infinite chain of paratextual material — of all kinds — attached to the primary text. Yet even in this digital environment, the ‘editor’s’ choices may be deliberate and curated, or else arbitrary and lacking in coherence.