tekijämerkkejä

tekijämerkkejä are annotations made by an author on a manuscript or printed text. They include corrections, suggestions, questions, or personal comments that the author adds directly to the pages. The practice dates back to early manuscript culture, where scribes and scholars marked their texts to indicate future revisions. In modern publishing, teksjämerkkejä are conventionally used during the proofreading and typesetting stages, allowing authors to provide feedback to editors and designers about layout, wording, and formatting.

There are several common types of tekijämerkkejä. Interlinear comments, written within the margins, address wording or meaning. Footnotes or endnotes appended to the text may provide contextual notes or clarifications. Separate pages often carry overall editorial comments, indicating structural changes or broader thematic concerns. In printed books, a distinct notation system—often using symbols such as underlines, brackets, or highlighted text—is employed to keep the author's traces separate from the final typeset version.

The significance of tekijämerkkejä lies in their ability to document an author’s creative process and maintain a transparent record of revisions. For scholars, annotated manuscripts offer insight into the evolution of a work, while publishers rely on them to ensure fidelity to the author’s intentions. In digital publishing, electronic annotation tools serve the same purpose, enabling collaborative editing while preserving the original author's voice.

Related concepts include marginalia, editorial notes, and the legal notion of a “copyright notice,” which can also be considered a form of authorial statement. In Finnish literary tradition, tekijämerkkejä are often preserved in heritage libraries, providing valuable material for textual criticism and author studies.