Document

A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often

the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the
Latin Documentum, which denotes a "teaching" or "lesson": the verb doceō denotes "to
teach". In the past, the word was usually used to denote written proof useful as evidence of a
truth or fact. In the Computer Age, "document" usually denotes a primarily textual computer
file, including its structure and format, e.g. fonts, colors, and images. Contemporarily,
"document" is not defined by its transmission medium, e.g., paper, given the existence of
electronic documents. "Documentation" is distinct because it has more denotations than
"document". Documents are also distinguished from "realia", which are three-dimensional
objects that would otherwise satisfy the definition of "document" because they memorialize
or represent thought; documents are considered more as two-dimensional representations.
While documents can have large varieties of customization, all documents can be shared
freely and have the right to do so, creativity can be represented by documents, also. History,
events, examples, opinions, stories etc. all can be expressed in documents.

Documents across mediums . Top-left: a word

processor document using LibreOffice. Top-right: a
copy of the Swiss Constitution in German. Bottom-left:
a vinyl record holding a set of songs. Bottom-right: a
computer program interpreting a fragment of a clay
tablet with cuneiform script about king Shalmaneser III

Abstract definitions

The concept of "document" has been defined by Suzanne Briet as "any concrete or symbolic
indication, preserved or recorded, for reconstructing or for proving a phenomenon, whether
 and technical drawing

Media:
mock-up,

script,

image,

photography,

and newspaper article

Administration, law, and politics:

application,

brief,

certificate,

commission,

constitutional document,

form,

gazette,

identity document,

license,

manifesto,

summons,

census,

and white paper

Business:
invoice,

request for proposal,

proposal,

contract,

packing slip,

manifest,
 report (detailed and summary),

spreadsheet,

material safety data sheet,

waybill,

bill of lading,

financial statement,

nondisclosure agreement (NDA),

mutual nondisclosure agreement,

and user guide

Geography and planning:

topographic map,

cadastre,

legend,

and architectural plan

Such standard documents can be drafted based on a template.

Drafting

The page layout of a document is how information is graphically arranged in the space of the
document, e.g., on a page. If the appearance of the document is of concern, the page layout
is generally the responsibility of a graphic designer. Typography concerns the design of letter
and symbol forms and their physical arrangement in the document (see typesetting).
Information design concerns the effective communication of information, especially in
industrial documents and public signs. Simple textual documents may not require visual
design and may be drafted only by an author, clerk, or transcriber. Forms may require a visual
design for their initial fields, but not to complete the forms.
Media

A page of a birth register for Jews from

1859

Traditionally, the medium of a document was paper and the information was applied to it in
ink, either by handwriting (to make a manuscript) or by a mechanical process (e.g., a printing
press or laser printer). Today, some short documents also may consist of sheets of paper
stapled together.

Historically, documents were inscribed with ink on papyrus (starting in ancient Egypt) or
parchment; scratched as runes or carved on stone using a sharp tool, e.g., the Tablets of
Stone described in the Bible; stamped or incised in clay and then baked to make clay tablets,
e.g., in the Sumerian and other Mesopotamian civilizations. The papyrus or parchment was
often rolled into a scroll or cut into sheets and bound into a codex (book).

Contemporary electronic means of memorializing and displaying documents include:

Monitor of a desktop computer, laptop, tablet; optionally with a printer to produce a hard
copy;

Personal digital assistant;

Dedicated e-book device;

Electronic paper, typically, using the Portable Document Format (PDF);

 Information appliance;

Digital audio player; and

Radio and television service provider.

Digital documents usually require a specific file format to be presentable in a specific

medium.

In law

Documents in all forms frequently serve as material evidence in criminal and civil
proceedings. The forensic analysis of such a document is within the scope of questioned
document examination. To catalog and manage the large number of documents that may be
produced during litigation, Bates numbering is often applied to all documents in the lawsuit so
that each document has a unique, arbitrary, identification number.

See also

Archive

Book

Documentality

Documentation

History of the book

Identity document

Letterhead

Realia (library science)

Travel document

References

1. Briet, S. (1951). "Qu'est-ce que la documentation?". Éditions Documentaires Industrielles

et Techniques. Quoted in Buckland, Michael (1991). "Information as Thing" (https://peopl
e.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/thing.html) . people.ischool.berkeley.edu. Retrieved
2023-10-18.
 2. Levy, David M., Fixed or Fluid? Document Stability and New Media. (https://web.archive.
org/web/20130606180031/http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.119.
8813&rep=rep1&type=pdf) , CiteSeerX 10.1.1.119.8813 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/view
doc/summary?doi=10.1.1.119.8813) , archived from the original (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.e
du/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.119.8813&rep=rep1&type=pdf) on 2013-06-06,
retrieved 2023-10-18

3. Buckland, M. "What Is a Digital Document?" 1998. In Document Numérique Paris. 2(2).

[1] (http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/digdoc.html) Archived (https://web.a
rchive.org/web/20111002042527/http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/digdoc.h
tml) 2011-10-02 at the Wayback Machine.

4. Buckland, Michael (2018). "Document theory" (https://web.archive.org/web/2022050603

0602/https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/0943-7444-2018-5-425.pdf) (PDF).
Knowledge Organization. 45 (5): 425–436. doi:10.5771/0943-7444-2018-5-425 (https://
doi.org/10.5771%2F0943-7444-2018-5-425) . Archived from the original on 2022-05-
06. Retrieved 2023-10-18.

Further reading

Briet, S. (1951). Qu'est-ce que la documentation? Paris: Documentaires Industrielles et

Techniques.

Buckland, M. (1991). Information and information systems. New York: Greenwood Press.

Frohmann, Bernd (2009). Revisiting "what is a document?", Journal of Documentation,

65(2), 291–303.

Hjerppe, R. (1994). A framework for the description of generalized documents. Advances in

Knowledge Organization, 4, 173–180.

Houser, L. (1986). Documents: The domain of library and information science. Library and
Information Science Research, 8, 163–188.

Larsen, P.S. (1999). Books and bytes: Preserving documents for posterity. Journal of the
American Society for Information Science, 50(11), 1020–1027.

Lund, N. W. (2008). Document theory. Annual Review of Information Science and

Technology, 43, 399–432.

Riles, A. (Ed.) (2006). Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge. University of Michigan

Press, Ann Arbor, MI.
Schamber, L. (1996). What is a document? Rethinking the concept in uneasy times. Journal
of the American Society for Information Science, 47, 669–671.

Signer, Beat: What is Wrong with Digital Documents? A Conceptual Model for Structural
Cross-Media Content Composition and Reuse (https://www.academia.edu/241739/What_i
s_Wrong_with_Digital_Documents_A_Conceptual_Model_for_Structural_Cross-Media_Co
ntent_Composition_and_Reuse) , In Proceedings of the 29th International Conference on
Conceptual Modeling (ER 2010), Vancouver, Canada, November 2010.

Smith, Barry. "How to Do Things with Documents (https://web.archive.org/web/201308050

73310/http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/HowToDoThingsWithDocuments.pdf) ",
Rivista di Estetica, 50 (2012), 179–198.

Smith, Barry. "Document Acts (https://web.archive.org/web/20131101121830/http://ontolog

y.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/document-acts.pdf) ", in Anita Konzelmann-Ziv, Hans
Bernhard Schmid (eds.), 2013. Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents.Contributions to
Social Ontology (Philosophical Studies Series), Dordrecht: Springer

Ørom, A. (2007). The concept of information versus the concept of a document. I:

Document (re)turn. Contributions from a research field in transition. Ed. By Roswitha Skare,
Niels Windfeld Lund & Andreas Vårheim. Frankfurt is Main: Peter Lang. (pp. 53–72).