Manuscript

Manuscript (Latin manu scriptus written by hand) is any work that is prepared by writing it down by hand in contrast to being printed or reproduced in any other way. Before the discovery of print, monks copied manuscripts such as bibles, gospels, missal?s, psalter?s, books of prayers, chronicles, royal or liturgic documents by hand.

A manuscript is usually preserved in form of a book, like for instance codex or roll. Historically manuscripts are have usually been written on either parchment, papyrus or paper.

In Library and Information Science, a manuscript can refer to any hand-written item in the collections of a library or archive?, e.g. archived letters or diary from a person.

In film and theatre, a manuscript, or script for short, is an author's or dramatist?'s text being used by a publisher for making a book (after editing?) or by a [theater company]? or film crew for making a performance?.

The word, manuscript, is often abbreviated to MS., plural MSS.