Textual criticism is a branch of
textual scholarship,
philology, and
literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of
transcription errors in
texts, both
manuscripts and printed books. Ancient
scribes made alterations when copying manuscripts by hand. Given a manuscript copy, several or many copies, but not the original document, the textual critic might seek to reconstruct the original text (the
archetype or autograph) as closely as possible. The same processes can be used to attempt to reconstruct intermediate versions, or
recensions, of a document's transcription history. The ultimate objective of the textual critic's work is the production of a "
critical edition" containing a text most closely approximating the original.