Section II: Types of Hypertexts

Since Ted Nelson first coined the term "hypertext", there has been debate over whether media other than text are encompassed by that term. Nelson himself has acknowledged the usefulness of the word “hypermedia,” although he claims that from the first, his vision of hypertext always embraced multimedia as well.

In this section, rather than try to distinguish between hypertext and hypermedia, we present two chapters that compare these two not mutually exclusive hypertext genres and the benefits and drawbacks of each.